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K 



FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION 
WORK AMONG YOUNG WOMEN 

1866—1916 



A History of Young Women's Christian Asso- 
ciations in the United States of America 



BY 
ELIZABETH WILSON 

Executive of the Secretarial Department 
of the National Board 



National Board 

of the Young Women's Christian Associations 

of the United States of America 

600 Lexington Avenue 

New York 






Copyright, January, 1916, by 

National Board of the Young Women's Christian Associations 

of the United States of America 



/ 



FEB -7 1916 




vu ?*,.rAKt«*M_ . 



Coxgregatio^:al Hcuse, 
Where the Boston Association First had Eooms 

(By permission) 



'( 



' 



.■m-3.. 



T 



ti 



I 



' 



DEDICATED 

TO THE WOMEN AND GIRLS WHO IN ANY PLACE 

AND IN ANY TIME HAVE COMBINED THEIR 

EFFORTS TO BRING IN THE KINGDOM 

OF GOD AMONG YOUNG WOMEN 



1> 



D 



PREFACE 

The purpose of this historical account is to show 
why and how Young Women's Christian Associations 
came into being and to indicate that the first half cen- 
tury is but the beginning of the movement. 

In order to represent the conditions which called 
out certain features, the language of old reports, cir- 
culars, addresses and correspondence has been freely 
used; while there has been a wealth of these original 
sources, in some instances it is undated, or annual 
and biennial reports have not stated the calendar 
month or year in which a measure was passed or new 
ventures undertaken. Some of the attempts to deter- 
mine these dates through comparison of material will 
probably prove faulty. I wish to thank all the friends 
who have assisted in collecting and comparing data 
and who have described historic work in which they 
had a part. 

It has been impossible to mention as many individ- 
ual Associations as might have been desired. Em- 
phasis has been laid on the recognition of unusual 
needs and the invention of successful means of meet- 
ing them and upon the development of phases of work 
rather than upon the consecutive events in given lo- 
calities. 

Elizabeth Wilson. 
New York City, 1916. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PART I— BEFORE 1866 

PRELIMINARY ORGANIZATIONS IN GREAT 
BRITAIN AND A^IERICA 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Introduction 3 

Status of young women in the United States 
before the Christian Association. Their work 
in relation to the home. Higher education, 

II United Prayer in the United Kingdom . . 7 

George Williams and the Association idea 
(1844). Miss Robarts and other early mem- 
bers (1855). Prayer Union Branches (1859). 
First use of the name Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association. 

HI An Open Door in London 13 

Women's occupations in Great Britain ( 1851 ) . 
The Knight of Womanhood, Lord Shaftesbury. 
The Nurses' Home. The Honorable Mrs. Kin- 
naird and the North London Home (1855). 
The Pall Mall Institute (1861). 

IV Federation Looking Toward the Future . . 19 

The Prayer Union and the Home and Insti- 
tute Branch united (1877). The United Cen- 
tral Council (1884) leading to founding of 
the World's Association (1894). 

y The Beginnings in America 22 

The American Revival of Religion in 1857-58. 
Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts and the New York 
ladies (1858). The first factory meeting. 
The first boarding home (1860). 



CONTENTS 



PART 11—1866 TO 1906 

LOCAL AND NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS IN 
THE UNITED STATES 

LOCAL 

CHAPTER PAGE 

VI The First Young Women's Christian Asso- 
ciation IN America 29 

Two attempts in Boston. Organization 
(1866). Rooms. The Beach Street and War- 
renton Street buildings. Pioneer departments 
— Cooking, Physical Education, Traveler's Aid. 

VII Other Pioneer City Associations .... 50 

Women's Christian Associations in Hartford, 
Providence, Pittsburg, and Allegheny (1867) ; 
Cincinnati, Cleveland, St. Louis (1868). 
Nine others in 1870 and 1871. Varieties of 
interests. 

VIII The Young Women's City Organizations . . 57 
Origin. Nature of membership. Influences of 
student Associations. St. Joseph, Scranton, 
Kansas City, Minneapolis, Toledo. 

IX City Development and Standardization . . 64 

Rise of departments and phases of work: 
religious meetings, Bible classes, workers* 
training classes, religious work directors; 
lunch rooms and cafeterias; social features, 
clubs; libraries, educational classes, sewing, 
cooking, nursing, physical education; Travel- 
er's Aid; industrial extension; administration 
buildings. 

X The Origin of Student Associations . . . 108 

Middle West co-educational colleges. Spon- 
taneous student Associations (1873-1880). 
Women members of college Young Men's Chris- 
tian Associations. Student Christian Associ- 
ation, University of Michigan (1858), Yoimg 
Men's Christian Association, University of 
Virginia (1858). Men's Intercollegiate Move- 
ment, Princeton (1877). Mr. Wishard and 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

the student Young Women's Christian Asso- 
ciation. Appeal to the Women's Christian 
Association conference. Segregation. Forma- 
tion of State Associations (1884). 

XI The Intensive Growth of Student Associa- 
tions 138 

Membership, social features, religious meet- 
ings, Bible study. The Student Volunteer 
Movement for Foreign Missions. The World's 
Student Christian Federation. Community 
service. Equipment. Secretaries. 

XII Country Associations 153 

Pleasant Valley township, Johnson County, 
Iowa (1884). Small towns in western states. 
County organizations in Minnesota (1898), 

NATIONAL 

XIII The Conferences of the Women's Christian 

Associations 159 

First national meeting at Hartford (1871). 
International meeting at Pittsburg (1875). 
Constitution, scope of work, programs, etc. 

XIV The National Association — Later The Amer- 

ican Committee 167 

Reasons for organization. Establishment of 
headquarters (1886). Summer conferences. 
World's and foreign work. Secretarial train- 
ing. 

XV The International Board of Women's and 

Young Women's Christian Associations . 196 
Outgrowth of the International Conference 
(1891). Explanation of name. World's Co- 
lumbian Exposition, Other expositions. Trav- 
eler's Aid. Chautauqua and Monteagle head- 
quarters. "The International Messenger" and 
"The Bulletin." 

XVI The Joint Committee Preparing the Way fob 

One National Movement 206 

Miss Grace H. Dodge. The Manhattan Con- 
ference of 1905. Decision to attempt union. 



CHAPTER 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



International Board Conference and American 
Committee special convention. Applications 
for charter membership. Organization Con- 
vention and election of National Board (De- 
cember, 1906). 



PART III— 1906 TO 1916 

THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIA- 

TIONS OF THE UNITED STATES OF 

AMERICA 



XVII The Present National Movement .... 233 

Adoption of policies. Development of depart- 
ments: Office; Publication; Field Work; Fi- 
nance; Conventions and Conferences; Secre- 
tarial Training; Home and Foreign. St. Paul 
Convention (1909). Adoption of constitution. 
The Portland definition of evangelical 
churches. The Federal Council of Churches. 

XVIII The Young Women of the Christian Asso- 
ciations 260 

Zirkus Buseh gathering at Berlin World's 
Conference (1910). Emphasis on membership 
at Indianapolis (1911) and Richmond Con- 
vention (1913). National Headquarters, San 
Francisco Exposition, 

XIX The Students 269 

State universities and other groups. The 
Studio Club; Central Club for Nurses. Negro - 
and Indian students. Student activities, re- 
ligious campaigns, voluntary Bible study, so- 
cial service, student initiative and coopera- 
tion. North American Student Council. Com- 
mission on Restatement of Basis. World's 
Student Christian Federation Conference, 
Lake Mohonk (1913). Student Volunteer 
Movement Convention, Kansas City (1913). 

XX The City Girls 281 

Membership, not buildings. Forms of coop- 
eration. Building campaigns. Community 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAOE 

service. Activities inside and outside the 
building. Summer programs. 

XXI The Giels in Industry ....... 289 

Statement of field. Industrial clubs and As- 
sociations. Federations of industrial clubs. 
Club Councils at conferences and camps. 

XXII The Country Giels 292 

County Associations in Illinois and elsewhere. 
Eight Week Clubs. The county summer con- 
ference. 

XXIII The Young Giels 297 

First branches; their laggard development. 
Study of adolescence. Camp Fire Girls' 
Council. 

XXIV The Strangers Within Our Gates . . . 300 

English classes for foreigners. International 
Institutes. 

XXV Girls in Other Countries 303 

Recapitulation of openings in India. Ameri- 
can work in China and Japan, South America 
and Turkey. Foreign students in the United 
States. American secretaries abroad. Con- 
trasts in World's Conferences (1898-1914), 

XXVI The Secretaries 316 

Origin of name. Scope and remuneration of 
office. Association of Employed Officers. Sys- 
tem of training. 

XXVII A Prophet Among Women . . . . . . 326 

Miss Dodge as president. Her colleagues and 
successors. 

XXVIII Mottoes and Spirit 330 

Zech. iv, 6 — Prayer Union, American Commit- 
tee, World's Committee. Gal. v, 13 — British 
Associates, International Board. John iv, 10 
— Young Women's Christian Associations of 
the United States of America. 

Appendix 335 






li 



LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS 

OPPOSITE 
PAGE 

Emma Robarts, Founder of the Prayer Union Branch in 

Great Britain 10 e/ 

Lady Kinnaird, Founder of the Home and Institute 

Branch in Great Britain . IQ ^^ 

Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts, first directress of the Ladies' 

Christian Association, New York City . . . . 22 •-" 

Congregational House, where the Boston Association first 

had rooms 32 ' 

Sewing Class in New York City Association, 1889 . . 106 ' 
Founders of the first Student Association . . . . . 116 '^ 
Ruth Rouse, when representing the Student Volunteer 

Movement 148 '^ 

Women's Christian Association, Hartford, Conn. First 

building constructed for Association purposes . .160 

Facsimile of autographs of delegates who formed the 

"National Association," August, 1886 172 ' 

Mrs. John V. Farwell, first president of the National As- 
sociation (later The American Committee) . . . 174 > 

Annie M. Reynolds, while visiting Russia as World's Sec- 
retary 182 

Morse Hall, Headquarters and Hostel of the Association 

of Lahore, India 188 

Secretaries and Students, Secretaries' Training Institute, 

Winter Term, 1904 . .194 

South Church, New York City, where present national 

movement was formed 226 ' 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

OPPOSITE 
PAGE 

The Auditorium, Asilomar Conference Grounds, California 248 
Michi Kawai, Secretary of the National Committee of 

Japan 262 

Delegates to the Fourth Biennial Convention, Richmond, 

Virginia, 1913 264 

Headquarters Building of the National Board of the 

Young Women's Christian Associations .... 266 

Young Women's Christian Association, St. Louis, Mo. 

Modern type of administration building .... 282 

Mary A, Clark Memorial Home, Los Angeles, California . 284 

Eastern City Conference, Silver Bay, New York, 1915 . . 288 

First County Conference, Conference Point, Lake Geneva, 

Wisconsin 294 

Ying Mei Chun, directing gymnastic drill in Shanghai, 

China 308 

Clarissa H. Spencer, General Secretary of the World's 

Committee 314 

Mabel Cratty, General Secretary of the National Board . 322 

Class of 1915, National Training School 324 

Letter sent by Miss Dodge to all the National Board staff 326 



PART I. BEFORE 1866 

PRELIMINARY ORGANIZATIONS IN GREAT 
BRITAIN AND AMERICA 



■»^ 



FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION 
WORK AMONG YOUNG WOMEN 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTION 

FIFTY years ago woman's work was in tlie home. 
And such faculty for organization had the mis- 
tress of the home that she could order the tasks 
of each season and of each day of the week, could 
assign suitable duties to the elder and younger daugh- 
ters, and teach them the varied processes until they 
became in turn as proficient as she. 

Up to the middle of the nineteenth century the three 
chief occupations for women, ^* gainful occupations" 
they were termed, in spite of the meager remuneration 
for each, were: domestic service, where an American 
born girl helped in another person's home; teaching 
school, where the teacher boarded around from house 
to house in many country districts ; and sewing, where 
the seamstress usually came to the house of her em- 
ployer for a longer or shorter time, or in the case of 
well to do families was a regular member of the house- 
hold staff. 

Even outside employments such as working in cot- 
ton mills were under a semi-domestic regime. The 

3 



4 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

corporations owned boarding houses for the women 
operatives, and established in each a matron, usually 
a widow with daughters in the mill. There was little 
financial risk in conducting this sort of an establish- 
ment, for the mill corporation deducted the weekly- 
board rate from the wages of each employee and paid 
the amount directly to the landlady. Such was the 
position held by Lucy Larcom's mother in Lowell, 
which fact accounted for the eleven year old child 
going into the mill. 

The hours of labor ran, or dragged, from five in the 
morning to seven in the evening, which tallied with 
domestic rather than business working time. The very 
church attendance was likewise regulated in paternal 
fashion, for the mill directors charged up **pew rent" 
to each employee, under their system of paying wages 
partly in commodities. 

Millwork dovetailed also into the public school sys- 
tem, because in those early years, teaching was for 
many mill hands a ''by employment" for the few 
months in the year when "school kept.'' 

"When the weaving and spinning went out of the 
house, and the weavers and spinners followed on into 
the mills, there w^as still a link between factory and 
home in the hand processes of manufacture carried on 
in the family living rooms. There is an economic 
basis of fact as well as poetic fancy in the verses con- 
taining, "Hannah's at the window binding shoes." 

If the situation in the first half of the nineteenth 
century, with few girls away from home, and a limited 
range of occupations open to women, did not seem 



INTRODUCTION 5 

sucli as to require what we are pleased to call As- 
sociation work in cities, neither were women college 
students feeling the need of voluntary religious organi- 
zations. Most of the seminaries and colleges to which 
women were admitted were built on Christian founda- 
tions by the prayers and labors and sacrifices of godly 
men and women, and consecrated to the '^ Christian 
nurture of youth/' Such was Mt. Holyoke Seminary, 
where Mary Lyon saw visions come true from 1837 to 
1849. Such was Oberlin Collegiate Institute, later 
College, where the influence of Charles G. Finney was 
felt from 1835 to 1875. Here in 1841 three young 
ladies graduated from the regular four years' college 
course, **the first young women in the country to re- 
ceive a degree in the arts.'' 

The personal piety of such students and their mis- 
sionary service here or abroad after graduation, were 
accepted as a matter of course, by those who arranged 
the curriculum, prescribed the use of week days and 
Sundays and rejoiced that the students received in- 
spiration as well as training to carry out the college 
ideals. 

Women had not yet learned to work together in a 
large way. They were achieving, but by acting as in- 
dividual forces, not as social elements. Like Lucy 
Larcom, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Louisa May Al- 
cott, they were writing ; like Maria White Lowell they 
were stirring others to write ; or like Ann Greene Phil- 
lips they were heartening others to efforts on behalf 
of oppressed humanity. Women came together within 
parish circles, for ladies' prayer meetings and "Dorcas 



6 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Societies" which made coats and garments and did 
other good works and alms deeds, but these were al- 
most entirely local activities. Even the ** Female 
Cent" societies did not burgeon into any general for- 
eign missionary society until 1861, when the Women's 
Union Missionary Society of America for Heathen 
Lands came into being. 

What changed these conditions? Many things; 
among them stand out three totally unlike factors : the 
invention of the sewing machine in 1846 ; the great re- 
vival of 1857-1858; and the Civil War, from 1861 to 
1865. 



CHAPTER II 

UNITED PRAYER IN THE UNITED KINGDOM 

IN England the early Victorian situation was not 
unlike that in America at this same time. Some 
noted achievements there were, due to the fact 
of the long established civilization, but on the other 
hand some social delays were occasioned by the con- 
servatism of that very same settled order of things. 
There is, thereby, all the more credit to those who had 
faith enough to regard these mountains as removable, 
wisdom enough to know where to begin, and grace 
enough to associate themselves with many others in 
accomplishing their original purpose or that larger 
purpose that is sure to develop when like-minded peo- 
ple cooperate. 

One such pioneer was George Williams, who came 
up to London from the provinces in the fall of 1841. 
That was a noteworthy year in religious history, for 
the Oxford Movement was at its height ; but the young 
draper *s assistant found his religious reading not in 
the polemic pamphlets of the Tractarian leaders, but 
in two of Charles G. Finney's books, *' Letters to Pro- 
fessing Christians,'' and ^'Lectures on Revivals." 
His place of employment, Hitchcock and Rogers, in 
St. Paul's Churchyard, was of the usual type of **liv- 

7 



8 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

ing in" drapery establishments, with dormitories on 
the top floor for assistants and apprentices. These 
young fellows worked off what spirits were left after 
their day of fourteen to seventeen hours behind the 
counter, in a way that left much to be desired. None 
of George Williams' five roommates professed him- 
self a Christian, but we are told that there was a 
Christian fellow in the adjoining inner bedroom who 
had only four roommates, whom he got to leave so 
that the two like-minded souls might have a place of 
prayer. Soon others joined them; they read together 
the Finney books, many were converted, larger rooms 
were used. Then they interested the head of the firm, 
who provided a chaplain to conduct daily prayers. 
Life at Hitchcock and Rogers was changed. Young 
men in other shops also put these ideas into operation. 
Finally, or to speak more correctly, as a beginning of 
the story, on June 6, 1844, twelve young men from 
four different church connections formed a Young 
Men's Christian Association with religious and social 
features, rented rooms, and engaged a salaried organiz- 
ing secretary and missionary to administer and extend 
the work. 

This was the origin of the Association idea, that is, 
young men and young women uniting from different 
Christian churches for higher all-round development 
and service and using both religious and secular means 
therefor. The new movement was so timely and its 
emphasis so distinct that leading clergy and laymen 
gave their assistance. 

His biographer found among George Williams' 



UNITED PRAYER 9 

papers a circular formulating a scheme for a Young 
Ladies* Christian Association which seems to have 
been sent out by him in the '40s. But the time for 
such an appeal to be listened to was not yet come. 
In the next decade the Crimean War set in motion 
waves which permanently affected the thought and the 
work of British womenkind — girls, young women, 
ladies, and ladies of title, in country and in city, down 
in the provinces and up in London. 

Barnet stands in English history as a battle field in 
the Wars of the Roses; in Association history it ap- 
pears as the residence of the Robarts and the Penne- 
father families. Rev. William Pennefather, vicar of 
Christ Church, known as the founder of the Inter- 
denominational Christian Conference and the Mild- 
may deaconess house and many similar institutions, 
had been given spiritual charge of hundreds of the 
orphans of the Crimean War, who had been gathered 
together by the Patriotic Fund workers; and Mrs. 
Pennefather was deeply interested in them also. The 
Robarts family included five unmarried sisters, de- 
voted to works of charity and education. Besides the 
infant school which their father had built and placed 
under trustees the daughters supported a school for 
girls held on their own estate. Many years before 
Tennyson had said, through King Arthur, **more 
things are wrought by prayer than the world dreams 
of,'' Emma Robarts, the youngest sister, was roused 
by such a realization of the vast possibilities of prayer, 
that she asked some of her friends in 1855 to pray on 
Saturday evenings for young women, either for those 



10 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

in their own circle or for young women as a class. 
**What can we do for them/' she wrote, **how reach 
and act on them, scattered as they are in every sphere 
of life ? Look at the young women of our day and re- 
member their number, their present and future in- 
fluence. Look at the several divisions of the class : 

1. Our Princesses and all who are in the glitter of fash- 

ionable life 

2. Daughters at home of the middle classes 

3. Young wives and mothers 

4. Governesses in families and teachers in Day and Sun- 

day Schools 
6. Shop women, Dressmakers, Milliners and Seamstresses 

6. Domestic Servants 

7. Factory Girls 

8. Young Women in our Unions, Hospitals, and Reforma- 

tories, the Criminal and the Fallen 

9. Those who are enchained by Judaism, Popery and 

heathenism 

*^What can be done for them? What means can be 
used to win their souls to Christ?" As her friends, 
assenting to this request, sent in their names, she 
copied these in a list. 

Heading the first list of twenty-three names in this 
Prayer Union is that of Mrs. Horatius Bonar of Kelso, 
Scotland. Each member notes her religious activities 
and Mrs. Bonar 's record is, *' District and workhouse 
visiting ; class of girls on Monday at 5 p. m. for Scrip- 
ture Instruction; Maternal meeting every fortnight; 
meeting in another district for Mothers every alter- 
nate Tuesday at 3.'^ Seven other Scotch names fol- 
low, then Mrs. Pennef ather 's and Miss Kobarts' own 




Miss Emma Eobarts, 

Founder of the Praj'er Union Branch in 
Great Britain 



UNITED PRAYER 11 

names. Their reports credit Mrs. Pennefatlier with 
'^Parish and workhouse visiting, Superintendence of 
Patriotic Orphan Homes, and of Homes in connection 
with Society for the Rescue of Young "Women, Scrip- 
ture Class every Thursday for young ladies,'' and 
show Miss Robarts' work to be, *' Sunday morning 
class of servants and dressmakers. Intercourse and cor- 
respondence with former scholars." Several of the 
early members lived in Ireland. A Bradford, Eng- 
land, member reports a class of ' ' adult factory girls. ' ' 
Classes for ''apprentices," "grown girls," "shop 
girls, " " milk girls, ' ' appear. George Miiller 's daugh- 
ter belonged, and Frances Ridley Havergal, who wrote 
the Young Women's Christian Association hymn, 
"True Hearted, Whole Hearted." 

"In the course of 1859 the first Branch was 
formed," wrote Miss Robarts; "a band of Christian 
girls uniting in the name of Jesus for their mutual 
benefit, and for that of any young women in their re- 
spective spheres whom they might be enabled to influ- 
ence for good." These members were largely girls 
of leisure and education who wanted to become more 
efficient workers for God. Miss Robarts also explained 
in the same circular that "the title of Young Women's 
Christian Association was assumed simply as the 
feminine of Young Men's," which had already become 
known to many of the same friends. The local units, 
however, were called Branches, not Young Women's 
Christian Associations. That term was usually re- 
served for the membership as a whole and the usage is 



12 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

steadily adhered to by many Britisli ladies, among 
them Miss Lucy M. Moor, the friend of Miss Robarts 
and Mrs. Pennef ather and the historian of the British 
movement. 



CHAPTER III 

AN OPEN DOOR IN LONDON 

MISS ROBARTS' classification of young 
women was no doubt made more from ob- 
servation than from statistics. However, 
the British census of 1851 reported 3,000,000 young 
women in Great Britain (excluding Ireland) engaged 
in industrial occupations ; of this number 500,000 were 
wives helping their husbands either behind the 
counter, at the desk, or in manufacturing processes. 

The 39,139 nurses in domestic service largely out- 
numbered nurses in hospitals and on cases, but the age 
of those nurses — half of them were from five to 
twenty years old — helps us to understand that Tilly 
Slowboy was as true to life as Sairey Gamp or Betsey 
Prig, who have come to the front as the representative 
English nurses of that period. As to the living-in 
system which prevailed for young women shop as- 
sistants as well as for youths, it was probably a survival 
from the time when one extra pair of hands was called 
in to help the shop keeper, of whose family the owner 
of the pair of hands then became a part. But the 
family idea had long since been abandoned. The girl 
shop assistants spent most of every week-day waking 

13 



14 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

hour in the shop itself. Recesses for meals were of the 
shortest and even on Sunday the girls were not al- 
lowed to stay in their own rooms. 

That knight of womanhood, who has been called the 
most spiritual Christian of his age, Antony Ashley 
Cooper, later the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, had 
spoken with alarm a few years before of the displace- 
ment of male by the substitution of female labor in in- 
dustrial occupations at large. Although he had led 
Parliament to put a stop to the degrading colliery 
practices where women and girls crawled through dan- 
gerous passages, harnessed like beasts of burden, drag- 
ging after them heavily loaded carts, yet women were 
stiU laboring in fields and factories. 

Young girls in dressmaking and millinery trades 
were working from fifteen to eighteen hours per day. 
There is no hint at this time of those occupations in 
business houses which were certainly lighter, but which 
were monopolized by men. In 1854 telegraph clerk- 
ships were first opened to women, in 1870 the post of- 
fice used a mixed staff in its clearing house branch. 

Only one occupation was genteel enough to engage 
the well bom young woman whose need to earn her 
bread was sometimes as severe as that of a girl in the 
lower classes. She might be a governess in a home. 
For this as for the other gainful occupations no pro- 
fessional preparation was required, and what she made 
of the position depended entirely upon her own person- 
ality and the character of the family where she lived. 

Ladies as well as hired nurses went out to the 
Crimean hospitals under the leadership of Florence 



AN OPEN DOOR IN LONDON 15 

Nightingale, that gentlewoman trained in the best in- 
stitutions of Europe. 

The Honorable Mrs. Arthur Kinnaird, so says her 
biographer, *^ cooperated with Viscountess Strangford 
and Miss Nightingale in sending out nurses. ' * Various 
institutions were recruiting places, among them a home 
in Fitzroy Square, London, where nurses might board 
and prepare for sailing. 

But the Crimean War had still another effect upon 
the woman's movement. The Fitzroy Square home 
suggested to Mrs. Kinnaird a more permanent effort 
for the benefit of all girls coming up to London from 
the provinces. 

To no avail does one search for minutes of a meet- 
ing where a resolution was passed to establish a Young 
Women's Christian Association. ** Ladies did not do 
much with making and seconding motions. They had 
a cup of tea together, talked about things, prayed over 
them and then did what seemed best, ' ' explained Lady 
Kinnaird 's daughter, the Hon. Emily Kinnaird, upon 
whose shoulders her mother's mantle rests. *'You 
could hardly say when it was organized." But some-*^ 
time during the year 1855 the decision was reached to 
enlarge the scope of the Home, and in January of 1856, 
the Hon. Arthur Kinnaird sent out a circular saying 
that he had taken over the responsibility of the late 
*' Nurses Home," although ''as nurses will benefit by it 
equaUy with other classes, we are still in a condition 
to carry out the design of the Nurses Association." 
By implication one learns that Mrs. Kinnaird was the 
head of this enterprise, but according to the English 



16 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

custom that where gentlemen are contributing funds 
to women's societies they also administer those funds, 
the name of the Hon. Arthur Kinnaird is signed as 
treasurer, with his address and that of his bankers. 

So the work was begun. During the first year there 
entered the home for longer or shorter periods thirty- 
nine persons classified as follows : 

21 Governesses, Matrons, etc. 

2 School mistresses 

3 Matrons of Emigrant ships 
9 Nurses from the East 

2 Foreigners 

1 Yoimg Person in Training for a school mistress 

1 Lady in Distress 

There was a lady superintendent in residence, but as 
her services were gratuitous she could hardly be called 
the first employed officer. 

Neither had the name Young Women's Christian 
Association been officially assumed, for the circular 
called the place *' North London Home, Late Nurses 
Home, or General Female Home and Training Insti- 
tution." 

However, the main departments of an Association 
were already outlined. Besides the boarding home 
there was an employment bureau for ''Matrons, Prot- 
estant Bonnes, etc.'* Intellectual needs were recog- 
nized and partly supplied through the lending library. 
Social features were combined with the religious activi- 
ties ; tea was always served in the friendly hour which 
followed the Sunday afternoon Bible class; there was 
an afternoon missionary meeting each month ; and the 
lady superintendent was at home every Tuesday and 




Lady Kinnaibd, 
Founder of the Home and Institute Branch in Great Britain 



AN OP^N DjOOE in tONDON 17 

Friday evening to young women from any part of 
London. 

These departments were emphasized by organizing 
in the Home a Young Women's Christian Improve- 
ment Association in 1858, when the second superin- 
tendent, a nurse returned from the East, came into 
contact with the girls in business houses who needed a 
*' Sunday Home" and opportunities for recreation, in- 
struction, and Christian companionship. By 1861 
there were four homes: one offered full board and 
lodging for five shillings a week ; two were serving the 
double purpose of residence and general headquarters. 
Next came (1861) the Institute at 118 Pall Mall, the 
first experiment of opening rooms for offices and class 
rooms independent of any residence. Mr. Kinnaird 
in a public address made the following distinctions : 

In what we simply call an Institute no young persons are 
boarded and lodged. It would be utterly impossible to pro- 
vide more than a few homes, however valuable these are, 
and when established they of course are involving house- 
hold cares, so that a resident superintendent in a Home 
must, like a lady in a private household, have less time 
for aggressive missionary work than the superintendent of 
an Institute, who has comparatively speaking no home 
cares and very few household duties involving her energy. 
The moral machinery, which is the sole machinery of an 
Institute, is applicable to every part of the metropolis as 
well as to country towns and to districts where facilities 
for lodging may not be needed. And we also think that 
some friends who might shrink from the responsibility of 
starting new homes might more readily be induced to start 
Institutes, when the work would solely consist in the loving 
and patient endeavor to gain access to the hearts of those 
whom the Association is designed to win. (Cheers.) 



18 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

People who complain of the length of the name 
Young Women *s Christian Association may care to 
know that the general circular sent out in 1861 showed 
the title ** United Association for the Christian and 
Domestic Improvement of Young Women." The re- 
ligious and philanthropic leaders of the day appeared 
on this directorate, headed by the Earl of Shaftesbury, 
President. 

It was now a metropolitan movement. ** While 
there are a few leading ideas emanating from the 
centre, giving harmony to the work, there is a great 
deal of practical diversity in the way of carrying it 
on!'' But a larger federation was ahead. 



CHAPTER IV 

FEDERATION LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE 

IN several parts of England the leaders of the 
Prayer Union branches had been thinking of **a 
sort of outer circle, or an organization for reach- 
ing and keeping an influence over girls not eligible for 
the Prayer Union." Some of these leaders were in- 
terested in the developments which led to the founding 
of the Girls' Friendly Society in 1875, and thought 
about an organic connection of the two societies, 
abandoning the plan, however, because of the Inter- 
denominational basis of the one, and the Church of 
England basis of the other. The leader of the London 
Prayer Union branch was also identified with Mrs. 
Kinnaird's rapidly expanding work, and since Mrs. 
Kinnaird was projecting a prayer union in connection 
with that it seemed reasonable to amalgamate the two. 
The secretary thus relates the action: — ''One day, 
quite unexpectedly, Mrs. Kinnaird called at 19A 
(Young Women's Christian Association Prayer Union 
Office at 19 A Great Portland Street, London, West) 
and Miss Robarts and she met for the first time. They 
settled the name and the card then, and the union of 
the two Associations in London was effected." This 

was in January, 1877. In May Miss Robarts died, 

19 



^ 



20 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

having willed to Mrs. Pennefather the presidency of 
the Prayer Unions, which numbered beside the forty- 
eight branches in London, about fifty elsewhere in 
England, sixteen in Scotland, twenty in Ireland, with 
some form of contact also with the continent of Eu- 
rope and British possessions in America, Asia and 
Australia. Perhaps 12,000 members in all were en- 
rolled. 

Not only had the Prayer Unions increased, but 
many Homes and Institutes all over England had 
spontaneously sprung up, as Birmingham (1860), 
Bristol (1861), Liverpool (1864), Manchester (1866), 
etc., etc., so that when reorganization was at hand its 
outlines naturally became, a London division with 
Mrs. Kinnaird as vice-president, and a country and 
foreign division with Mrs. Pennefather as vice-presi- 
dent. The Earl of Shaftesbury, who had been presi- 
dent of the Pall Mall Institute, was of course elected 
president. His autograph letter of acceptance is on 
file. 

St. Gile's House, Cranborne, 

Salisbury. 
Dear Mrs. Kinnaird: 

My services to the Single Association are so small that 
they will be nothing to the Double one. Nevertheless, if you 
desire me as President I will accept the honourable office, 
and give what time I can when you smnmon me to its serv- 
ices. 

I urged a similar Institute the other day on the good 
ladies of Glasgow. They have a Society for young women, 
but it is a very "wee" insignificant thing. 

Yours truly, 

( Signed ) Shaftesbury. 
November 1, 1877. 



LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE 21 

This combination provided definitely for country 
and foreign branches. The nearness of Great Britain 
to the continent, the familiar acquaintance of Eng- 
lish women with foreign people and languages, and 
the Christian responsibility felt for British colonists 
by the wives of civil and military officials, led on to 
the Foreign and Continental Division and the Extra 
European and Colonial Division when the United Cen- v 
tral Council was formed in 1884, and this was the germ 
from which the present "World's Young Women's 
Christian Association developed. Invitations to the 
April, 1892, meeting of this United Central Council 
were sent to America, asking representatives skilled in 
national administration to attend and remain to form, 
if the time were ripe, a World's Young Women's 
Christian Association. Further, when in 1894 pre- 
liminaries had been arranged and Great Britain, the / 
United States of America, Norway and Sweden had 
united as the active members of a World's Association, 
the chairman of the British Foreign and Continental 
Division, Mrs. J. Herbert Tritton, was made presi- 
dent. 



A ^ 



CHAPTER V 

THE BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 

VERY great revival of religion has certain 
features which distinguish it from similar 
manifestations upon other occasions. The 
historic American revival of 1857-1858 showed three 
outstanding characteristics: the number and value of 
prayer circles ; the unity of Christians of different de- 
nominations; and the large place filled by women as 
leaders of organized Christian forces. 

Doctor Nathan Bangs, writing a series of articles in 
the phraseology of the day, declared that the help of 
the ''pious female '^ should not be spurned. One of 
the famous union prayer circles of that winter in New 
York City was led in the Church of the Puritans on 
the corner of Union Square and 15th Street by a mem- 
ber of the Broadway Tabernacle, a young woman of 
splendid intellect, personal charm and fervent re- 
ligious life, Mrs. Marshall 0. Roberts. 

The Young Men's Christian Association, organized 
half a dozen years before, had maintained remarkable 
meetings in the Reformed Church on Fulton and Wil- 
liam Streets, and the Methodist Episcopal Church on 
John Street, and hence it was not strange for the 
women connected with this ladies' prayer meeting to 

22 




First Directress of the Ladies' Christian Association, 
New York City 



THE BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 28 

contemplate an organization with aims and methods 
somewhat akin to those of the men. 

Accordingly, a meeting was called in the chapel of 
the New York University on November 24, 1858, and 
a Ladies' Christian Association was formed with 
thirty-five charter members, who elected Mrs. Roberts 
as '^ first directress.'' The first constitution, printed 
in a tiny booklet four by five inches in dimensions, is 
of historic interest. 

We, the undersigned, believing that increase of social vir- 
tues, elevation of character, intellectual excellence and the 
spread of Evangelical Religion can be best accomplished by 
associated effort, do hereby adopt for our mutual govern- 
ment the following: 

Constitution 

Any lady who is in a good standing of an Evangelical 
church, may become an active member by paying one dollar 
annually in advance. 

Any lady not a communicant may become an associate 
member — except voting and holding office. 

Duties of Membees 

They shall seek out especially yoimg women of the opera- 
tive class, aid them in procuring employment and in obtain- 
ing suitable boarding places, furnish them with proper read- 
ing matter, establish Bible classes and meetings for religious 
exercises at such times and places as shall be most con- 
venient for them during the week, secure their attendance at 
places of public worship on the Sabbath, surround them with 
Christian influences and use all practicable means for the 
increase of true piety in themselves and others. 

One can but notice that the next year after the mem- 
bers had been conducting meetings in churches, homes, 
mission chapels, and elsewhere as well as assembling 
in their general Association prayer service, they 



24 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

amended part of this preamble to read, ''fully im- 
pressed with the belief that their own personal piety 
may be greatly promoted by associated effort, and that 
greater influence can thereby be brought to bear upon 
many of their own sex in this city (who are without 
those means of social and religious education enjoyed 
by them) .'' They had recognized that their first duty 
was "to be'' before they assumed the responsibility 
*'to do," and the Spirit of God opened their eyes to 
some unusual opportunities for the service they were 
prepared to render. New York City led in the print- 
ing trades and clothing manufactures and there were 
sufficiently large forces of young women employed by 
some of these establishments to attract the attention of 
the Ladies' Christian Association as a field for their 
efforts. Their 1860 report speaks of religious services 
for the one hundred women employed in the Tract 
House, and the five hundred women employees in a 
skirt factory. A later report sustains the conjecture 
that this was a hoop skirt factory. A casual observer 
of that decade would have been surprised if any one 
had said that the hoop skirt and its manufacture would 
soon become laughably out of date, but that the fashion 
of religious services among young women in mills and 
factories would become universally prevalent. This 
innovation of the New York ladies antedated by a 
dozen years any other recorded effort of systematic 
extension of the Christian Association into young 
women's work places at the noon hour. 

All this may have been more or less inconspicuous, 
but their next venture brought them into great promi- 



THE BEGINNINGS IN AMERICA 25 

nence. The Rev. Heman Dyer had been asked to find 
a comfortable, safe boarding place for a young woman 
from out of town. She was, it is said, a minister's 
daughter who wanted to study for self support and 
could not afford the prices charged by respectable 
families and boarding houses. Dr. Dyer reported this 
to the new Association and added, **Now ladies, here is 
your work; open such a Home for such young girls." 
They had no precedent, but they had faith. So they 
hired a house at 21 Amity Place for $850 a year rental 
and opened it on June 1, 1860. Twenty-one found 
their way into the family the first year; for the most 
part students of wood-engraving, drawing and paint- 
ing in the School of Design for Women, and teachers 
and needlewomen. Other homes in other localities 
were later rented and properties purchased. This re- 
quired incorporation, which took place in 1866 under 
the name Ladies' Christian Union, but the aim of the 
ipaembers and their double devotion to their Wednes- 
day prayer meeting and to the Christian welfare of 
young women did not vary. Mrs. Roberts ' enlistment 
of young girls of leisure in this enterprise finds place 
in a later chapter. 



PART II. 1866 TO 1906 

LOCAL AND NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS IN 
THE UNITED STATES 



CHAPTER VI 

THE FIRST YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION IN 

AMERICA 



G 



i 4 ^^^ ANNOT something be done by benevolent 
ladies that shall remain a permanent in- 
stitution?" This was the question asked 
by Mrs. Lucretia Boyd, a city missionary of Boston, de- 
pressed by the deplorable state of things existing 
among the self supporting girls whom she met. Her 
regular duties took her from house to house, from 
street to street, month after month, and she knew that 
many young women were rooming and boarding them- 
selves in the attics of lodging houses where the better 
rooms of the lower stories were occupied by young 
men. Few made a part of any pleasant social circle, 
but were either lonely and discouraged or ready for 
chance acquaintance at railroad stations, on the street 
or in places of worldliness and folly. Some of these 
girls had been religiously educated and had sufficient 
inherent strength to resist the downward tendencies of 
city life, but others were unconscious of their own 
danger. Young women were continually coming from 
all parts of New England and the Maritime provinces 
to earn their living in Boston, but there was no agency 
offering protection or advice to them as strangers. 

29 



so FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

When ill they were neglected, when out of work they 
were helpless. Mrs. Boyd set in order the facts made 
up from her diary entries of several years, and roused 
the interest of some of the leading Christian women. 
She received a hearing at the Boston City Missionary 
Society as she outlined the plan of a Young Women *s 
Christian Association, and it looked as if the desired 
permanent institution were to be compassed in 1859. 

One of the women, Mrs. Edwin Lamson of the Park 
Street Church, discussed the plans with her pastor. 
He thought the women could not do all this alone, and 
that the men would not help in the undertaking, yet he 
presented the matter to the ministers' meeting. His 
brethren evidently saw eye to eye with him, for they 
decided that it would be hazardous for the ladies to 
undertake such a scheme, and seemed to believe that 
in advising them against it they were kindly prevent- 
ing them from making a failure. Nonplussed, the 
women saw no way to go ahead in establishing a Chris- 
tian organization in opposition to the leaders of Chris- 
tian affairs, and action was indefinitely postponed. 

This unfavorable response from the clergy was all 
the more unexpected because they had been most active 
a few years before in forming the local Young Men's 
Christian Association, although a sea captain, Thomas 
V. Sullivan, was the real moving spirit. He had read 
in his denominational paper, The Watchman and Be- 
fleet or, an account of the London Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association written by an American theological 
student visiting London and reporting upon this novel 
organization, ** where there is no turning a crank, no 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 31 

doing good by proxy, a society which asks for sym- 
pathy, prayers and active cooperation, which asks for 
men, young men, nothing more." Captain Sullivan 
is said to have visited the London Association, to have 
become as enthusiastic as the previous American visi- 
tor and to have lost no time in imparting his knowl- 
edge and enthusiasm to the young men in his own home 
city. They advised with their pastors and Boston or- 
ganized on December 29, 1851, the first Young Men's 
Christian Association in the United States. They 
afterwards heard that Montreal, Canada had taken the 
same step some weeks before. "Within a year, 1,200 
men had joined and the first quarters had been out- 
grown. 

Only one conclusion can be drawn from this un- 
happy attempt at interdenominational work for girls, 
namely, that the pastors knew the needs of the young 
men of the community much better than the needs of 
the young women. They probably had not realized 
that young women were entering the business world to 
such an extent that the reasons for *'the combination 
of effective religious appeal with a humanitarian 
social-service emphasis upon a better environment for 
the tempted young man'' were becoming valid also 
in the case of young women. This realization came a 
little later when some one said, *^The considerations 
that have led to the formation of a Young Men's 
Christian Association apply, if possible, with increas- 
ing force in the case of young women, who from their 
position and sex are more unprotected and more help- 
less." And the next time the call for the young 



32 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

women of Boston was sounded, it was heard and 
heeded. 

Another city missionary had become aroused to the 
interest of orphaned, homeless and otherwise unpro- 
tected girls. There was thought of establishing a 
home for young women who came to the city in search 
of instruction or employment, but that particular 
feature was postponed and decision made *'to organize 
on the plan of the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion." On March 3, 1866, thirty ladies met at the 
home of Mrs. Henry F. Durant in Mt. Vernon Street 
and adopted a constitution under the name of the 
Boston Young Women's Christian Association. 

Its object was *Hhe temporal, moral and religious 
welfare of young women who are dependent on their 
own exertions for support." 

Its basis of membership was that "Any Christian 
woman who is a member in regular standing of an 
Evangelical Church may become an active member of 
this Association by the payment of one dollar annu- 
ally." 

Its duty, as carried into effect by the board of man- 
agers, was ''to seek out young women taking up their 
residences in Boston, endeavor to bring them under 
moral and religious influences, by aiding them in the 
selection of suitable boarding places and employment, 
by introducing them to the members and privileges of 
this Association, securing their attendance at some 
place of worship on the Sabbath, and by every means 
in their power surrounding them with Christian as- 
sociates. It shall be their duty also to exert them- 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION S3 

selves to interest the churches to which they respec- 
tively belong in the objects and welfare of the Associa- 
tion, and to use all practicable means for increasing 
its membership, activity and usefulness." The hostess 
of that day, Mrs. Durant, was unanimously elected 
president. 

The new society had a name. It was soon to find a 
local habitation. Two rooms were secured in the Con- 
gregational building at 23 Chauncey Street ; these were 
comfortably furnished by the generosity of friends 
and were opened in May. The reading room was par- 
ticularly large and airy, and with papers and maga- 
zines, a few books and a loaned piano, it was a cheerful 
place to which to ask young women. The general secre- 
tary, Mary Foster, with her attractive personality 
and lovable disposition, was a wise counsellor to the 
many girls who came in complaining of low wages or 
no work or loneliness in the city, and at each weekly 
meeting of the board of managers she was able to 
[bring to the members opportunities for the personal 
service they had enlisted to do. Miss Foster advised 
about getting positions and homes. In six months 
'she h^d found boarding places for fifty girls. Light 
drinks and luncheons were served in the rooms, which 
were open day and evening except Sunday. Although 
''such healthful recreation as might be offered" was 
provided, yet the chief social resource seemed to have 
been that of finding a ready listener accessible at all 
times, "A heart at leisure from itself, to soothe and 
sympathize. ' ' 

During the first year a singing class was started as 



84t FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

well as the Bible class and the Thursday prayer meet- 
ing. Another of the dreams of the projectors came 
true in that the Good Samaritan Hospital offered free 
care to members who might be ill. 

So seriously did the managers accept their self im- 
posed obligation that they sent a circular letter to the 
pastors of country churches that first season, relating 
how the duty of extending sympathy and protection 
to young working women in Boston had been recog- 
nized, and how they stood ready to fulfill all the terms 
of their constitution. An embarrassment of riches 
followed. More applications for rooms and board re- 
sulted than they could satisfy with the places they 
were able to recommend. 

By this time the sentiment for a Home was unani- 
mous, and a second circular was issued calling for 
financial help, which was the means of securing the 
two houses at 25 and 27 Beach Street. When altera- 
tions and furnishings were completed at a cost of 
about $40,000 the property was dedicated on February 
19, 1868. On the list of subscribers to this fund is the 
name of Professor Henry W. Longfellow. 

Here were found lodgings for eighty, and imme- 
diately questions of eligibility arose which were de- 
cided as follows: 

In admitting young women to the privilege of the Home, 
the managers feel that they are called upon to discriminate 
in favor of the younger class of applicants and of those who 
do not receive large compensations. It is obvious that these 
classes need the aid, protection and sympathy of such an 
Institution. Those who are older, and whose principles are 
more firmly established, can better take care of themselves 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION S5 

elsewhere. A few such as are intelligent and truly religious 
belonging to this class will be especially welcome on account 
of their influence upon their associates at the Home. As the 
Institution is not designed to be a reformatory, no one will 
be admitted whose references in regard to character are not 
perfectly satisfactory. 

A list of the occupations followed by members of the 
Beach Street family a few years later suggests rather 
accurately, no doubt, the openings for self supporting 
women of that day, though the fact that the record was 
made shortly after the great Boston fire may affect 
somewhat the classification as given : 



Seamstresses 


114 


Clerks in Stores 


27 


Compositors 
Machine workers 


7 
7 


Milliners 


10 


Bookfolders 


6 


Vest makers 


5 


Book keepers 
Tailoresses 


4 
2 


Copyists 
Cap makers 
Teachers 


2 
2 
2 


Artists 


2 


Telegraph operators 
Students of Music 


1 
2 


Students of Book-keeping, Drawing and 
Elocution 


10 


Blind Girls 


2 



205 



If the family had diversified occupations by day they 
were at night a homogeneous group as far as age was 
concerned, for few more than twenty-five years old 
were received, and suitable homelike customs could be 



86 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

maintained. The ten o'clock closing hour pleased one 
New Hampshire mother. ^'I have been so glad," she 
wrote, ^'that such a restraint was about my child liv- 
ing in your city ; I could wish you closed even earlier. ' ' 

The evenings at home offered much that was pleas- 
ant to do. Besides what had been begun in Chauncey 
Street there were classes in Astronomy, Botany, Physi- 
ology, Penmanship, and Bookkeeping. The library 
was constantly enjoyed in spite of its regretted de- 
ficiency in books of poetry, and there were two home 
evenings each week aside from the special times of 
** social amusement during the hours of leisure." 

A provision for associate membership among any 
young women of good moral character, and the fact 
that the dining room of the house was conducted on 
the restaurant plan, meant that many young women 
in addition to the lodgers in the home had a part in 
the Association. Many more wished to take advan- 
tage of the employment bureau who were practically 
unassistable. It may be that no such word is found 
as yet in the dictionaries, but the condition it describes 
is familiar to even amateurs in social organizations. 
At a time when Boston was credited with 20,828 
needlewomen the annual report records the ''need of 
competent dressmakers, seamstresses, machine work- 
ers, and capable nurses," the feasibility of ''a depart- 
ment of instruction in these branches of employment 
for young women that require time and experience in 
preparation for them," and a desire to "open and 
maintain a Training School." 

Not only because Boston was the first city in Amer- 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 37 

ica to use the name Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation does this history go into details that cannot 
be repeated in other instances, but also because from 
the first it has had a rather symmetrical development, 
not emphasizing one department inordinately above 
another. It also originated many lines of work which 
have been adopted into the whole movement, its basis 
has been one which guarantees its purpose in spite of 
changing personnel of working force, it has adhered 
to formative instead of reformative measures and it 
has been of large service to other Young Women's 
Christian Associations and other betterment agencies 
by training women for their administrative and teach- 
ing staffs. It has still another distinction — it was the 
field in which Charlotte V. Drinkwater poured out un- 
stintingly thirty-two years of service. Hers was a 
leadership so unselfish one wonders how it could be ef- 
ficient, but so efficient one realizes it must have been 
unselfish. 

When the city wished to widen Beach Street and of- 
fered the Association a reasonable sum for its prop- 
erty, the managers decided to plan and erect a new 
building. Although the Hartford Women's Christian 
Association, whose organization had been inspired by 
Boston, had in October, 1872, entered its new home, 
the first in the country to be constructed for such a 
purpose, yet the Boston Association undertook as its 
own original problem to devise a structure so appropri- 
ate to the needs of girls that they should find in it a 
typical Christian home after the New England pat- 
tern. One means of raising the $120,000 needed for 



38 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

the new property was a mammoth ten days' fair at 
which $38,000 was cleared; this included the sale of 
a piano for $850, of a valuable India shawl and other 
expensive articles, since the memory of the great Sani- 
tary Commission Fairs of Civil War days still lin- 
gered with the public. Further funds were raised by 
subscription, and on October 14, 1874, the new War- 
renton Street Home opened its doors for two hundred 
residents, who could secure board at the family table, 
and room, light, heat and personal laundry for $3.00 
up to $5.50 a week. An adjoining house on Carver 
Street was purchased at the time for the employment 
bureau. Nothing could be further desired as to phys- 
ical equipment, but the person to make it serve the 
young women was yet to seek. 

Mrs. Edwin Lamson of the Boston Association 
Board of Managers was also a trustee of the Lancaster 
Girls' Industrial School, where Miss Drinkwater had 
been as teacher and matron for six years and had been 
developing among the girls heretofore untried plans. 
With the invitation which the Boston board extended 
to her to become superintendent of the building came 
these carte blanche instructions: ** Build it up by 
your own originality; no one can tell you how to do 
it, and the men's prophecy of women's failure must 
not be fulfilled. ' ' Accordingly when Miss Drinkwater 
arrived on the first of April, 1875, she began to take 
account of stock and discovered amid the bills payable 
a coal bill for $500. When she went down to lead the 
sixty-six boarders in their evening devotions, she be- 
gan to learn the next secret, that the thirty or more 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 39 

girls who had come in from Beach Street were truly 
loyal to the Association, but the others seemed to con- 
sider their presence there as a favor. She soon put the 
pieces of the puzzle together; an unpaid bill for coal 
resulted in sparing use of it, a cold house, and an all- 
round chilly atmosphere. While the loyal members en- 
dured this discomfort as manfully as possible the oth- 
ers frowned, murmured and complained incessantly. 
The janitor when ordered to put on more steam said 
that the boiler would burst if the pressure ran above 
seventy pounds, and he would not go beyond that. 
On his next day out the new superintendent called in 
the steam fitter who had installed the heating system, 
learned every detail of it and kept her own counsel. 
Soon there came a wretchedly cold, stormy day when 
she knew the girls would be coming home drenched and 
dismal. She called the janitor to her office, told him 
to make a grate fire in the company back parlor, and 
put on seventy-eight pounds of steam. ''But seventy 
is all the boiler will stand.'' ''You may put on sev- 
enty-eight and I will be responsible for the conse- 
quences." The house began to warm up. As Miss 
Drinkwater saw the girls returning, she opened the 
basement street door, saying, "Come in here and lay 
off your wet wraps, and then after supper come down 
to the back parlor." Adverse sentiment began to 
melt. Soon the girls told others in their places of 
business that the "Warrenton Street Home was a good 
place to live in, and by the May board meeting the 
number had risen from sixty-six to ninety-one. 
But summer was ahead, with probably a more diffi- 



40 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

cult situation as to vacant rooms. The residents and 
staff wrote letters to friends all about, extolling the 
merits of this new building and asking that they and 
their friends come and see them in town at one dollar 
a day. * ' The few newcomers who ventured to test our 
accommodations were reckoned as so many trophies for 
the cause, and we spared neither time nor strength in 
entertaining them." This summer campaign was as 
effective as the original letter to the New England min- 
isters in 1866, for when fall came on the house was 
filled with the girls for whom it had been put up. In 
fact, some fastidious young persons who had an- 
nounced that they ''didn't like the street" and ''didn't 
want to be considered objects of charity" now com- 
peted with each other for rooms for the coming year. 
Convention delegates and other transient guests 
poured in and were glad to obtain cots for the nights, 
or even to get bedrooms outside and come in to join 
the family in parlors and dining room. 

Yet there was something more than good manage- 
ment which was making that home a success : ' ' sanc- 
tified common sense," the owner of this quality called 
it, common sense evidenced by care in assigning the 
one or two roommates so that the necessary compan- 
ionship would be enjoyable and beneficial; delicacy 
in gaining and retaining the confidence of members 
of the family; alertness in anticipating and gratify- 
ing wishes ; resourcefulness in providing home amuse- 
ments; cordiality in inviting young men friends to 
the house ; tact in promoting voluntary literary, social 
and religious organizations in the home ; and depend- 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 41 

ence upon the Spirit of God for daily wisdom in reach- 
ing and elevating the soul, which was the primary 
object of her work. 

Out of the employment bureau and its perplexing 
problems rose much of the strongest future work. 
Again and again had the demand for good household 
helpers overwhelmed the secretary, who saw only a 
meager number of women for whom the Association 
could conscientiously vouch among the crowd await- 
ing positions. Some who might have been efficient, 
were not, because of personal discrepancies; some 
could not take places, some would not take them, others 
took them but did not keep them. Again and again 
the question of a training school for domestic service, 
or a kindred institution, was before the managers. 
Finally, a little later, a house next door was rented 
for a bureau of instruction, with a boarding depart- 
ment and arrangements for girls of sixteen years or 
more to secure a three to six months' course in all do- 
mestic branches, including sewing and laundry work. 
As the plan progressed it seemed wise to grant com- 
pensation to students after a certain duration of resi- 
dence, and as the course included some study of Eng- 
lish subjects as well as religious instruction the gradu- 
ates went out with a good economic and moral prepara- 
tion for a calling in which the demand was unabating. 

In 1879 were held, three times weekly, cooking 
classes taught by Madame Favier and attended by 
women of leisure, or any who wished domestic instruc- 
tion but could not come into the three months' resi- 
dence required in the domestic training school, of 



42 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

which some six or eight were taking advantage. But 
the most interesting development of this cooking 
regime was that a donor — a man, as might be reason- 
ably expected — offered a course of twelve lessons in 
cookery to a class from the public schools, and Mr. 
Swan, head master of the Winthrop School, sent 
twelve girls from the senior class, who finished their 
studies with a May Day Exhibit, in 1880, and with 
enough general satisfaction so that this course was 
followed the next season by another taught by Mrs. 
Webb, a graduate of Miss Parloa's normal class. 
This was experimental work in a double sense, as the 
subject had not before been taught in the Boston 
schools. The combination of boarding house and 
bureau of instruction was favorable to the training 
school class, but the other students hoped for a place 
distinct from that where meals were being prepared. 
All of this was due in good season. 

Then too, the employment bureau, while dealing 
exclusively with domestic occupations, could not be of 
much help to the steady stream of young women whose 
strength or aptitude fitted them better for other du- 
ties, and for these some systematic effort must be made. 
One day three Canadian sisters, all wearing mourn- 
ing, came in asking advice as to how to begin making 
their way in the world. The eldest had applied for 
a position at the post office, thinking that would be 
congenial and remunerative. She learned that there 
were no vacancies and already several thousand ap- 
plications on file. Upon the superintendent's advice 
the elder began the study of bookkeeping, the second 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 43 

entered nurse's training and the youngest worked for 
her board in the home and went to public school. This 
incident of girls unfitted for anything, searching 
everywhere for a chance to earn their bread, deter- 
mined the opening of a Business Register, which ever 
afterwards sought places for girls, as the domestic em- 
ployment bureau continued to seek girls for places. 
With this registry the Mercantile School, as the busi- 
ness classes were termed, and other educational de- 
partments closely cooperated. Dr. Edward 0. Otis 
inaugurated a course of Emergency Lectures in 1883 
which were so popular as to be immediately repeated. 
On December 8, 1884, the new building at 40 Berke- 
ley Street was dedicated. It contained the training 
school and other educational departments, and the 
employment bureau, assembly hall, offices of adminis- 
tration, parlors, and reading room, large dining room 
and sleeping rooms for one hundred and fifty-six resi- 
dents. On the fifth floor was the Durant gymnasium, 
the first to be incorporated into a Young Women's 
Christian Association building. Physical education as 
now conducted was the outgrowth of a class in calis- 
thenics taught by one of the boarders in 1877, of ath- 
letics in the park in 1882, and of a few simple exer- 
cises originally prepared for the residents in the War- 
renton Street Home, with a few chest weights on closet 
doors and in the corners of hallways as apparatus, in 
1882. That same year free instruction was offered a 
class from the Association in Miss Allen 's famous gym- 
nasium. The board of managers had heartily accepted 
and made the uniform suits required, and the super- 



44 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

intendent accompanied the class during the first sea- 
son. The first teacher in the Durant gymnasium was 
Anna Wood of the Wellesley College gymnasium fac- 
ulty. 

The calls for domestic help kept growing louder. 
Sometimes Miss Drinkwater would count twenty 
housekeepers looking for maids where she could, see 
one girl whom she could recommend, with almost any 
price put upon her services. She knew there were 
girls coming into the city who needed the very kind 
of work in homes here offered and who needed still 
more the protection and advantages of other depart- 
ments in the Association. So one April morning in 
1887, Miss Drinkwater rose at five o'clock and walked 
to one of the docks. An old wharf hand stopped his 
sweeping to hold speech with her. ''Every steamer 
brings girls who don't know where to look for work. 
Well, well, am I not glad to know that the women of 
Boston have awakened to the needs of these girls!" 
The way opened later to have one secretary give her 
time to meeting steamers and following up the various 
and unfolding needs of the young women who came. 
In July, 1887, Miss M. E. Blodgett of Mt. Holyoke 
College, a girlhood friend of Miss Drinkwater, as- 
sumed this new position. Girls who were helpless be- 
cause they could not speak English, learned how to 
talk and act and think like Americans. Circulars and 
newspapers carried the address of this unusual ''In- 
telligence Office ' ' into German and Scandinavian com- 
munities of both continents, and strangers began to 
look it up on arrival. As the Young Traveler's Aid 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 45 

Association of Boston had already begun to be of use 
in the same way, so far as receiving travelers was con- 
cerned, a meeting was held to divide the territory. 
This society remained in charge of the railroad sta- 
tions and the Boston Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation of the docks, where boats from Atlantic coast 
states and provinces and transatlantic ocean steamers 
landed hundreds of women passengers on a day. In 
the first three months Miss Blodgett was able to serve 
five hundred and eight girls through channels within 
and without the Association. 

Every year there was a keener desire for a school 
of domestic economy and industrial arts, or, as some 
one termed it, "a college for mental, spiritual and 
physical culture." This should train girls in house- 
wifery as a ladylike accomplishment, as a means of 
self support in families or institutions, or as a profes- 
sion in training others in schools or missions. Mrs. 
Ellen H. Richards of the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology and a personal friend of the superintend- 
ent advised on the prospectus which Miss Drinkwater 
drew up before it was presented to the managers for 
adoption. *'It's all right," she said, **but what you 
have put into this curriculum requires five years." 
The impossibility of a one year course attaining the 
end was sure ; to keep students five years was equally 
impossible, so a compromise was made on a two years* 
course. 

Though the board of managers was somewhat ap- 
palled, Mrs. Durant, the president, whose name is 
known in academic circles in connection with the 



46 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

founding of Wellesley College, believed in it, and in 
the fall of 1888 the school opened with a month of 
public demonstration lectures by Mrs. Emma P. 
Ewing of Purdue University. Instruction in domes- 
tic economy covered cooking and general household 
management, purchase and care of family supplies, 
home sanitation, home dressmaking, home millinery 
and economical selection of wearing material. In- 
struction in industrial arts embraced industrial draw- 
ing, clay modeling, carpentry for household needs, 
wood carving and light upholstery. 

The experimental kitchen was a model of its kind, 
for it was a large airy room fitted up as a laboratory 
with individual equipment for each student and with 
charts, a food museum, and other teaching appliances. 
The regular classes met here day and evening for cook- 
ing lessons, the normal class secured their advance in- 
struction here and twice a week, the twenty girls in 
the Training School for Domestics were taught here. 

Among the teachers and lecturers in Domestic Sci- 
ence in various years have been Miss Emily Hunting- 
ton, Mrs. Mary A. Lincoln and Miss Anna Barrows. 
The Normal pupils were resident and paid inclusive 
charges from October to June as in any girls' school 
for general culture. 

Of course religious education was not overlooked and 
presently from the original Bible classes there devel- 
oped an evening Bible school with prescribed courses 
leading to examinations. On Saturday evenings, the 
Eev. James M. Gray of the Gordon Training School, 
which at that time had no evening classes, offered a 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 47 

Synthetic Study of the Bible. On Tuesdays there was 
Bible Geography and History by Miss Lucinda J. 
Gregg, and on Thursdays Bible Interpretation by the 
Rev. J. M. Orrock. Naturally this led to a depart- 
ment for Christian workers as a part of the Normal 
Training School and the whole was formally termed 
^ ' School of Domestic Science and Christian Workers. ' ' 
Nor was it strange that Miss Drinkwater, who was in 
constant demand for preparing papers and other pro- 
gram duties for Association conventions, should be 
considered the natural head for a department of As- 
sociation Organization. This she gave in two months' 
courses for five years (1897 to 1901 inclusive), and 
from the forty or more students there went out some 
devoted and capable secretaries to Women's and 
Young Women's Christian Associations throughout 
the country. 

Thus for thirty-three years of nearly continuous la- 
bors Miss Drinkwater 's mind, might, soul and body 
strove for young women, her neighbors in the gospel 
sense. After the presentation of the secular depart- 
ments upon one occasion, the question was asked her, 
*'What is the Boston Young Women's Christian Asso- 
ciation doing in the line of religious work ? ' ' This an- 
swer was given: ''Soul winning and Christian charac- 
ter building through a score of means." These were 
cited in a paper read at the International Board Con- 
ference in 1893. 

1. Personal efforts of directors and resident oflBcials to 

bring strangers under moral and religious influence. 

2. By aiding them in the selection of suitable boarding 

places, and by friendly visits and relief in trouble. 



48 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

3. By securing their attendance at some place of worship 

on the Sabbath. 

4. By introducing them to Sabbath School and Church 

Socials and surrounding them as far as possible with 
Christian associates. 

5. By a free distribution of printed cards of invitation to 

religious services held in the Berkeley Street build- 
ing, also by tracts and leaflets. 

6. By meeting girls at the wharves who arrive as strangers 

on our shores and ministering to their bodily and 
spiritual needs. 

7. By daily family worship in each of the Homes. 

8. By weekly home prayer-meetings and Sabbath morning 

devotions conducted by Christian young women of the 
Home. Bible classes for all. 

9. By object teaching in Bible study through models, 

charts, maps and blackboard work. 

10. By practical application of the truth to individuals. 

11. By personal appeals to the unconverted. 

12. By letters of transfer from one Association to another. 

13. By loans and gifts of money to poor but worthy girls, 

temporarily ill or out of work, or otherwise in special 
need. 

14. By aiding ambitious girls to an education with the hope 

that their talents will be consecrated to God's service. 

15. By the aid and influence of Christian teachers in Schools 

and Class Department. 

16. By equipping young women with a systematic course 

of Bible Study and Scientific Homemaking, and send- 
ing them out as Missionaries, Teachers, Young 
Women's Christian Association Secretaries, Pastors' 
Assistants and organizers of different kinds of re- 
ligious works throughout the country. 

17. By practical training in all forms of Mission Work 

under the leadership of a Christian worker, in Girls' 
Clubs, Free Kitchen Gardens and Industrial Classes 
conducted and sustained by the Association. 

18. By teaching yoimg women the proper relation of body 

to mind and spirit and their personal responsibility 
to God in its care and development. 



FIRST AMERICAN ASSOCIATION 49 

19. By placing the unskilled under religious influences while 

being trained in some branch of industry. 

20. By teaching the ignorant to read, and furnishing them 

with Bibles. 

21. By warning the willful of danger and pointing them to 

Christ. 

22. By letters of sympathy and counsel to the absent. 

23. By private seasons of prayer with inquirers. 

24. By the truth of God unfolded to doubters and skeptics. 
By the above means the entire work of the Boston Young 

Women's Christian Association is permeated with general 
religious instruction. 



CHAPTER VII 

OTHER PIONEER CITY ASSOCIATIONS 

WHEN these two groups of Christian women 
in New York and Boston who had organ- 
ized on behalf of self supporting girls 
were augmented in June, 1867, by a similar society 
in Hartford, Connecticut, a third title had been in- 
troduced, Women's Christian Association, but the 
aim, ** improving the welfare of self supporting young 
women,'' the active membership within Evangelical 
churches, and the duties of managers, were almost 
identical with those of the two Associations previously 
established. 

This was not strange. The first president, Mrs. 
Charles B. Smith, in a reminiscent anniversary ad- 
dress forty years later, told how her husband's niece, 
Mrs. Marshall 0. Roberts of New York City, had 
spoken at the Ladies' Union prayer meeting in the 
Pearl Street Church of Hartford upon the text, * * The 
Master is come and calleth for thee, ' ' in the winter of 
1867. The recently organized Young Men's Christian 
Association of Hartford, the knowledge of what Mrs. 
Roberts was doing in New York City, and correspond- 
ence with Mrs. Durant, president of the one-year-old 
Boston Association, helped the ladies of the Hartford 

50 



OTHER CITY ASSOCIATIONS 51 

prayer band in deciding whether to undertake preven- 
tive or reformatory work. ''Each was a great work, 
but they must be separate, and in our infancy we 
could undertake but one. ' ' When the preventive pol- 
icy had won the day and a home for self supporting 
girls was in prospect Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, 
one of the leaders, remarked, *'I'm going to lobby to 
be matron of that home. ' ' 

But they did not wait for that home. A few hun- 
dred dollars was raised to lease rooms in a business 
block on Asylum Street from which the landlord who 
lived near by really received more than his rent, for 
he said he delighted to sit and listen to the singing 
of the girls at the rooms. That very autumn a lady 
subscribed $1,000 for the nucleus of a building fund. 
To this, the first organization of ladies in the city, 
much help came from the clergy and well known oc- 
casional speakers, such as H. Clay Trumbull and 
D. L. Moody and the famous ''Singing Evangelist," 
Philip Phillips. 

Reckoning exactly, the Women's Christian Associa- 
tion of Providence, Rhode Island, antedated Hartford 
by about six weeks, but the deliberations of the man- 
agers as to reformatory versus preventive measures 
ended in a compromise, and the home which was 
opened in Providence on July 23, 1867, combined the 
two features. But the experiment proved the unde- 
sirability of the arrangement, a separation was made 
and a new constitution adopted so that the Associa- 
tion might really in its present form be said to date 
from March, 1868. Other cities organizing Women's 



52 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Christian Associations in the years immediately fol- 
lowing covered both these branches and other forms 
of institutional work. In this connection it has been 
said, 

While many of the Associations at their origin took the 
work of the Young Men's Christian Associations as a type 
for their own, it was soon found out that the requirements 
for successful work among women were much more varied 
than for men. In the ncAver communities where few 
charitable societies existed the Associations must embrace 
and sometimes confine themselves to fields of labor already 
filled by societies in older cities. Thus the charge often 
made, that "the Young Women's Christian Associations 
and Women's Christian Associations embrace all sorts of 
things," appears on the surface to have truth, but under- 
neath all the variety lies the one common purpose, never 
lost sight of by any Association, to do all things possible for 
the elevation of women physically, mentally, morally and 
spiritually. 

To the establishment of a third Young Women's 
Christian Association in Pittsburgh, which dates from 
1867, the productive religious sentiment of that decade 
also contributes, as is seen by the following extract 
from one of its reports: 

During the session of a Christian Convention under the 
direction of Rev. Mr. D. L. Moody and the Young Men's 
Christian Association, when the spirit of God, invoked by 
the presence and prayer of these lovers of God and their 
fellow men seemed present in power, a request was made to 
Rev. Mr. Moody that he would tell of the wonderful work 
of the women of London for their own sex, and so instruct 
the women of Pittsburgh and Allegheny that they too might 
lend a helping hand to the destitute and suffering and save 
the tempted. 

He addressed a large meeting of interested men and 



OTHER CITY ASSOCIATIONS 53 

women, who were anxious for this new departure for 
the cause of God and humanity, and thus on the spot 
a Women's Christian Association was organized and 
$1,640 subscribed as an initial offering. 

So powerful was this impulse that in 1875, when 
Pittsburgh entertained the Third International Con- 
ference of Women's Christian Associations, reports 
were submitted from ten distinct branches in order of 
their date of organization, — the Temporary Home for 
Destitute Women, Home for Aged Protestant Women, 
Boarding Home for Working Women, Sheltering 
Arms, Women's Foreign Union I\Iissionary Society, 
Gilmore Mission, Bible Reader's i\Iission, Ladies' De- 
pository and Employment Office, Hospital Committee 
and the Young Women's Christian Association of 
East Liberty. 

Westward the star of empire continued and in 1868 
two Women's Christian Associations were formed in 
Ohio, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. Of the former Mrs. 
John Davis, its first president, said, ' ^ The instrument 
under God in the formation of this Association was a 
member of the Young Men's Christian Association of 
Cincinnati who saw the- need and suggested the work. 
This young man, now a missionary in China, has the 
satisfaction of knowing we are reaping a rich harvest 
from the small seed he planted." The first result 
for girls was the opening of a home in March, 1869. 
' ' They have a well ordered, contented household with 
a good table, neat rooms, and a general compliance 
with rules. But the work of the Association is not 
limited to the care of young women at the Home. 



54 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

They have organized a city missionary work, visiting 
in the hospitals, county jail, city prison for women, 
house of refuge, work house, etc., seeking to cheer and 
encourage a class so much neglected, to lead better 
lives." Public sentiment was so strong in Cleveland 
that the old hall at the comer of Superior and Seneca 
Streets, then the home of the Cleveland Young Men's 
Christian Association, was crowded to its utmost ca- 
pacity at the initial meeting. * * Almost immediately a 
Missionary Committee was formed, the city was re- 
districted and a certain definite tract assigned for 
visitation to each patronizing church." The next 
year they secured property and opened a boarding 
home in November, 1869. 

And still further to the west St. Louis women had 
been saying, *' There should be a place of safety in 
this great western city for young women thrown upon 
their own resources for maintenance." A vacant 
building had appealed to them as particularly avail- 
able for such a home, and they had even fixed upon 
a clergyman and his wife to be its proper guardians. 
Presently the way opened, as is recorded in the first 
report. In November, 1868, Mr. H. Thane Miller of 
Cincinnati, who was in attendance at a Christian con- 
vention in St. Louis, invited the ladies of that city to- 
gether that he might urge upon them the necessity of 
Christian labor among and for their own sex. This 
call was responded to by seventy-five or more ladies, 
among them many earnest Christian workers with the 
inquiry in their hearts, *'Lord, what wilt thou have 
me to do?" 



OTHER CITY ASSOCIATIONS 55 

His earnest appeals for sympathy, for counsel, for aid, 
for a Christian Home for Women, made more forcible, if 
possible, by a recital of incidents that had fallen under 
his own observation, entranced the audience and led them 
to feel that his lips were touched with pentecostal fire and 
his soul clothed with poetry as with a garment attuned to 
the very essence of holy song. Could this be lost, his zeal, 
his song, which might be said "to animate the dead and 
move the lips of poets cast in lead"! Let the sequel tell. 

The sequel was the organization of the Women's 
Christian Association of St. Louis, which within four 
months had leased, furnished and opened a boarding 
home. 

Under a still further variety of circumstances did 
the other pioneer city Associations come into being. 
Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts, first directress of the La- 
dies' Christian Union of New York City, invited a 
company of young women of leisure to meet at her 
home at 107 Fifth Avenue on February 10, 1870, 
where they formed a Young Ladies' Branch of this 
Union which next year became the Young Ladies' 
Christian Association of the City of New York, and in 
1876 changed the title to Young Women's Christian 
Association. Utica also dates from 1870, and Phila- 
delphia, which "received its first call and inspiration 
from Mr. Miller, who addressed Christian women on 
'Women's Work for Her Own Sex,' " also Washington, 
D. C, Dayton, and Buffalo. In 1871 Newark, New 
Jersey, Germantown, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, 
Massachusetts, wheeled into line. Some eight or ten 
other cities were listed up to this time as carrying on 
work which either lapsed shortly afterwards, or be- 
came absorbed in other general movements where the 



56 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

features they had been emphasizing rightly belonged. 

Because of the variety of purpose and method indi- 
cated above, it was natural that the constitutions of 
the later pioneers varied more than did the three first 
formulated. In a number * ' any woman upon the pay- 
ment of the membership fee" might become an active 
member. 

Almost every one of the pioneer Associations started 
some work which later became a prominent independ- 
ent philanthropy or charity in the city. Examples of 
this are the Woman's Exchanges for sale of women's 
handwork which the Women's Christian Association 
of Cincinnati, St. Louis and many other cities evolved 
and put upon a paying basis before they were inde- 
pendently maintained. The Board of Associated 
Charities in Cincinnati and many other relief organ- 
izations elsewhere had their rise in a Women's Chris- 
tian Association. For eleven years the Young Ladies' 
Branch of the Women's Christian Association of 
Cleveland developed work for children, until in 1893, 
the Day Nursery and Kindergarten Society of Cleve- 
land became a chartered institution in care of the five 
day nurseries and six kindergartens thus originated. 
This roll might be indefinitely extended. 

*'The elevation of women physically, mentally, 
morally and spiritually" was not only forcing women 
into unsuspected fields of opportunity ; it was also re- 
vealing unsuspected capacities that were henceforth 
abundantly made use of. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CITY ORGANIZATIONS 

IN certain cities, the Young Women's Christian 
Association expressed the maternal concern 
which Christian women felt for young women 
getting a foothold or making their way in unfamiliar 
surroundings; in other cities the Association resulted 
from the sense of sisterhood through which a few ear- 
nest Christian young women were led to work for the 
things which they and the others wanted. 

Some of these beginnings were rather humble. The 
St. Joseph, Missouri, Association, organized in 1888, 
said in an anniversary meeting that there was "a list 
of about twenty names as charter members, with no 
money and little time," but the secretary of the pros- 
perous Association, Martha Fisher, remembered to add, 
"but many promptings of the Holy Spirit born from 
the consciousness of an effort put forth 'in His 
name.' " Some of the methods may have been ama- 
teurish, as this survey shows. ' ' In our own city there 
are 1,500 self supporting young women — 375 are not 
under home influences, 515 are in factories, 238 in 
offices, 184 are teachers, 173 seamstresses and 390 do- 
mestics." But if the premises were perhaps inac- 
curate the conclusion was correct enough. ''With 

67 



5» FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

these statistics before us, can any one doubt the need 
of a Young Women 's Christian Association ! ' ' 

This was indigenous growth: Kalamazoo, Michigan 
(1885), Lawrence, Kansas (1886), Ypsilanti, Michi- 
gan (1887), and Topeka, Kansas (1887), started be- 
fore the days of State secretaries. The influence of 
graduates of Mississippi Valley coeducational colleges 
was felt by many of the early city Associations, even 
Scranton, Pennsylvania, organized in 1888 ; for the 
first president, Mrs. L. M. Gates, who made Scranton 
the model for a period of years, was Helen Dunn of 
Hillsdale College, Michigan. 

Mingled with the spirit of consecration which was 
really the motive power of these capable young women, 
there was frequently a feminine outburst of envy. * ' I 
don^t see why we girls can't have a place like the 
Young Men's Christian Association to go to." And 
through their own struggles they did come to possess 
such a place in one city after another, a place where 
they could work together and where the workers them- 
selves shared in the objects of the Association as stated 
in the constitution almost universally adopted — **The 
object of this Association shall be the improvement of 
the spiritual, mental, social and physical condition of 
young women." 

In some cities there were already women's organiza- 
tions including in their various activities the housing 
of young women or specializing in that. This was 
the case in Minneapolis in 1890 where the Women's 
Christian Association, an outgrowth of the Ladies' 
Christian Aid Society, had for twenty years repre- 



YOUNG WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS 59 

sented the evangelical churches of the city in relief 
work for families, an industrial school for children, 
and other good work. At that time it was devoting its 
energies to homes for self supporting young women, 
for transients, for aged women and aged ministers. 
In the churches there was a very active Christian En- 
deavor Union and the young women of its Central 
Committee sought in vain for some quiet spot down 
town where they might meet at noon for consultation 
and prayer. Plenty of places they found for obtain- 
ing food and even talking at the table, but no place 
where they could have a committee meeting with 
prayer. Again it was said, ''The young men can go 
to the Young Men's Christian Association, I wish we 
had a place of our own. ' ' 

These Christian Endeavor leaders called an evening 
meeting in February when the new state secretary of 
Minnesota was to be in town, and begged the State 
Committee for guidance in opening a "real city 
Young Women's Christian Association." The State 
Committee promised help on condition that they could 
show they were in earnest by holding a Young 
Women's Sunday afternoon meeting regularly until 
spring, and the girls responded by electing a provi- 
sional committee to have charge of this. This com- 
mittee was made up of a recent graduate from coedu- 
cational Carleton College, at home for a year or two, 
another girl of leisure, a practising oculist, a business 
girl, and the young wife of the general secretary of 
the Young Men's Christian Association. They kept 
up the meeting and their determination grew week 



60 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

by week. When spring came their state secretary re- 
turned from the convention of the International 
Young Women's Christian Associations (see Chapter 
XI Y) held in Scranton, with abounding revelations 
of that work, which served as both pattern and inspira- 
tion, and Miss Nettie Dunn, general secretary of the 
International Committee, was able to make a prom- 
ised visit at the same time. After consultations with 
the ladies of the Women's Christian Association who 
had been hoping for such an institution in Minneap- 
olis, but had felt unable to add another department of 
their own, after evening committee meetings of girls 
and day committee meetings of women, the Young 
Women's Christian Association was formed and be- 
gan to look about for a location. This was secured in 
October "in an attractive suite of rooms," so the first 
annual report said, and although some callous people 
called it an ordinary apartment or even a flat, to the 
enthusiastic charter members it contained ''a secre- 
tary's office, reading room, parlor, class room, com- 
mittee room, kitchen and bath." 

It was furnished by donations of things new and 
old, including a library of 380 books, and was opened 
at once for the religious and social occasions which 
formed most of their early program. It certainly 
was a place in which to work together, for out of the 
127 active members, there were twelve standing com- 
mittees, counting in all 102 names, but it was not a 
place of general resort, and any skilled financier will 
see that these two initial departments were not 
revenue-provoking. Even the references to employ- 



YOUNG WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS 61 

ment were gratuitous. One of the dearest illusions 
was early dispelled, that is, that by opening a room, 
putting a name on a door and asking a hostess to be 
present to receive, troops of shy strange girls would 
thereby appear to make the acquaintance of the hostess 
and be entertained by her. Definite invitations were 
accepted, indefinite invitations were not. 

**Are you reaching the factory girls?" inquired one 
patient business man, writing out a check because he 
had confidence in the lady who presented the little 
red leather subscription book to him. '^My sister 
went up to your rooms to entertain them one evening 
last week, and she said nobody came except some 
of the regular members for something else." The 
embarrassed secretary accompanying the board mem- 
ber explained that two girls from the shoe factory and 
one from the woolen mills had attended a sociable a 
few evenings later and said they had a splendid time. 
However, the kindly criticism set them to thinking and 
later on quarters were secured with regard to the 
gymnasium classes which Abby Shaw ]\Iayhew taught, 
and to the lunch room and those other features which 
girls always know they want, and the location was on 
a street to which one did not have to be personally 
conducted. 

Out in the middle west the term '* working girls" 
was conspicuous for its absence. In a newer civiliza- 
tion and especially in college towns, so many girls 
worked or were making themselves capable of doing 
so that the participle was generally omitted. In many 
cities which were rapidly increasing in population 



62 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

during the period of 1880-1890 and thereabouts, such 
responsible positions were being held by young women 
in railroad and newspaper offices, in wholesale and re- 
tail business houses and elsewhere, that when the 
Kansas City, Missouri, Young Women's Christian 
Association in 1890 launched the expressions "busi- 
ness women'' and "business girls," other communi- 
ties gladly followed that example in nomenclature. 

Two or three young business women in Toledo had 
formed an independent Young Women's Christian 
Association with a score or so of members, and had 
rented a small upper room where they met for re- 
ligious meetings and an occasional social festivity, in- 
viting others to join them as opportunity offered. 
They were not affiliated with any state or national 
body, fearing that they might be taxed in proportion 
to their membership. Still they were so desirous of 
uniting with the International Committee that they 
sent to Chicago for a traveling secretary to come and 
explain matters. There was a full meeting, to which 
was presented the plan of financing state and national 
work by voluntary gifts, and when the speaker closed 
with the patriotic principle that these budgets were 
"Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute," 
there was a unanimous vote in favor of affiliation. 
That was December, 1891 ; in a few months the Toledo 
Association had a new suite of rooms, nearer the center 
of town and nearer the ground, and called Agnes Gale 
Hill as general secretary. They increased their mem- 
bership in a year more than five times over, entertained 
the International Convention in 1893, and in 1894 of 






YOUNG WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS 63 

their own will and upon their own initiative sent out 
their beloved secretary as the first American repre- 
sentative to a foreign field and never since relinquished 
that support. 



- CHAPTER IX 

CITY DEVELOPMENT AND STANDARDIZATION 

THEOUGHOUT all the early years the satis- 
faction of local divergencies was giving way 
to the effectiveness of reasonable similarity. 
Christian Associations for young women, whether con- 
ducted by women or by young women, were growing 
more like each other as experience taught the value 
of cooperation between elder and younger. The 
Women's Christian Associations were forming Young 
Ladies' Branches or Junior Committees or adding 
daughters' names where mothers' names had been en- 
rolled. The young women's organizations were de- 
pending more and more upon the older women on 
boards of management, and the ''heavy committees, 
like those on Finance, Rooms, and Noon Rest." 
Young women were studying a city, learning what a 
Young Women's Christian Association was doing in 
other comparable places, and might do in their own 
communities, and then challenging with these facts and 
prospects the older women to work with them in 
bringing these things to pass. And when a petition 
signed by hundreds of girls had been the means of 
bringing a Young Women 's Christian Association into 
being, the signers were naturally the charter members, 

64 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 65 

and still more naturally, no question was raised as to 
whether self supporting girls might be members either 
active or associate. These charter members from 
home, schools, factories, offices, shops and stores were 
the Association itself, active for the most part, look- 
ing for all the help which the older Christian women, 
clergy, heads of local movements, and secretaries of 
State and National Committees, could give, but not 
waiting for the action of any of these, nor dependent 
upon the strength or weakness of any of these, in at- 
tempting to plant the institution which they felt they 
and the other girls needed. 

"What did they expect to realize? There are cer- 
tain Association features which are the deposits of 
decade after decade. Others come in or go out with 
the civic or economic or educational manifestations, 
local or nation-wide, but the permanent features 
change only in aspect, or emphasis, and even the 
temporary are seen to respond to some fundamental 
need of a girl, her respect for her body or the expan- 
sion of her mind or the realization of her soul. 

As has already been seen, the North London Home 
of 1855 and the Boston Association of 1866 contained 
the germ of almost all the departments which forty 
or fifty years have only served to develop. Each of 
these departments has a miniature history of its own 
which properly finds its place in any account of 
the rise of city Associations, for while "a Young 
Women's Christian Association is greater than the 
sum of its parts, ' ' these parts have yet to be taken into 
account. 



i 



66 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Prayer meetings were the atmosphere in which the 
Young Women's Christian Associations were born and 
grew into usefulness. 

Because the need for housing young women under 
a hospitable Christian roof seemed paramount, all the 
seventeen Associations listed as pioneers soon made a 
Boarding Home the center of their interests, with the 
exception of the New York City Young Women's 
Christian Association, which, beginning as a branch of 
the Ladies' Christian Union, did not duplicate the 
work the latter had been carrying on for a decade. 
This is one reason why it is difficult to classify the re- 
ligious elements of the early programs, since the meet- 
ings for the young women at large cannot always be 
distinguished from the family prayers of any Chris- 
tian household^ 

But from the very first, before any homes were 
opened, there were weekly devotional meetings. The 
board members met for spiritual communion and 
found in their hours of intercession light for the path 
ahead and a deepening confidence in the divine leader 
in whose name they had assumed unusual responsibili- 
ties. Many a woman has acknowledged that in these 
Ladies' Prayer Meetings where week after week the 
same familiar company gathered, pleading requests 
common to all, she learned how to speak to God aloud 
in prayer and found courage to lead such meetings or 
to conduct larger assemblies as the way opened up 
later on. 

The Thursday evening prayer meeting in the very 
first rooms of the Boston Association was another type 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 67 

of devotional meeting which has been followed by 
weekly prayer services in probably every Associa- 
tion throughout the country. 

How the religious element permeated the boarding 
homes of a city has already been seen from Miss Drink- 
water 's summary of means used in the Boston Associa- 
tion. 

But the first large attempt to build up a religious 
service for young women of the whole city was that 
of the New York City Association. In 1872 there met 
for a Sunday afternoon Bible class seven women; six 
of these were young women without Sunday school 
relations, the seventh, the teacher, was Ella Doheny. 
As became the custom those present on that first day 
left their names and addresses and from this record of 
attendance grew up the membership roll. Miss Do- 
heny gave herself unsparingly to preparation for the 
lesson, usually a continued exposition of one book of 
the Bible with special application to the members of 
the class; workers in other departments cooperated 
heartily in extending to young women who came into 
the library, the employment bureau and other parts of 
the building, personal and cordial invitations to this 
meeting. In time this class grew to an enrollment of 
2,000 with an average attendance of 600. The chap- 
lain, as Miss Doheny soon became, went regularly with 
a group of members before the service, but later these 
United Workers, as they called themselves, held their 
devotional meeting on an evening during the week. 
Thousands of women visiting New York found their 
way into this Sunday Bible class and carried into 



68 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

many states the memory of the dignified service from 
which radiated uncounted lines of helpfulness to its 
members and visitors. The Easter observances were 
so largely attended that two overflow meetings were 
sometimes provided in other rooms after the spacious 
chapel was filled. It is not strange that on the south 
wall of this assembly room close to the platform where 
as teacher and leader she had dominated the life of 
that influential Association, there should have been 
erected by the class a bronze tablet bearing these 
words : 

In loving memory of 
ELLA DOHENY. 

Enteeed into lite eternal February 3, 
1910. Won in youth by the Scripture, 
called by this Association and identi- 
fied WITH all phases OF ITS WORK FOR 

forty years. She served the LORD 

CHRIST AS A MINISTER TO WOMEN IN THE 

TEACHING OF THE WoRD AND IN THE CURE 

OF SOULS. 

I HAVE CHOSEN YOU, AND ORDAINED YOU, 

THAT YE SHOULD GO AND BRING FORTH FRUIT 

AND THAT YOUR FRUIT SHOULD REMAIN. 

Somewhat after the English terminology this serv- 
ice was called a Bible class, although its teachers pre- 
sented the lesson in the form of an address and others 
took part only in the verse reading and opening and 
closing exercises. 

In most of the Associations which began work with 
only a suite of rooms for headquarters, the Sunday 
afternoon ** gospel meeting'' was the heart of the 
whole organization. It was a taken-for-granted ap- 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 69 

pointment; one did not say '^a" gospel meeting but 
**the" gospel meeting. In 1888, when the state of 
Kansas reported twenty-one Associations, twelve in 
cities and nine in colleges, the Gospel meeting was the 
main element of each local report, with an attendance 
of twenty, thirty-four, sixty-five, etc., as the case might ^ 
be. These little gatherings were very simple. The 
music was chiefly singing from a Gospel Hymns col- 
lection accompanied upon a cabinet organ. A differ- 
ent leader took charge each week, opening the topic 
announced for the day in such a way as to elicit the 
cooperation of the other young women in testimony 
and prayer. Sometimes a *' Bible Eeading" was 
given, either prepared by the leader or carefully se- 
lected from some of the religious periodicals to which it 
had been contributed by a well known Biblical student. 
Sometimes a decision meeting was held where girls 
determined to follow Christ and '^come out on the 
Lord's side.'* The power of the meeting was often 
inverse to the self confidence of the leader, just as it 
was often out of proportion to the size of the town. 

Indispensable to the gospel meeting was the invita- 
tion committee, thus charted in the first model consti- 
tution adopted by most of the Associations of that era. 
*'The Committee on Invitation shall seek to promote 
the attendance of young women at the rooms and meet- 
ings of the Association by personal solicitation and dis- 
tribution of invitations and in every other available 
way." These available ways measured the ingenuity 
and the consecration of the committee. 

When Associations grew larger and multiplied de- 



70 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

partments, the religious emphasis was more dis- 
tributed, yet in certain cities, as Aurora, Detroit, 
Omaha, and Harlem, one felt that she had not really 
visited the , Associations, unless she had met with them 
on Sunday afternoon. The preliminary circle of 
prayer for God's blessing on the meeting, the decora- 
tions of the assembly room, the ushering, the reception 
committee, the leader of the singing, the choral class 
in evidence as choir, the cordial presiding officer, the 
speaker of the afternoon (usually a prominent Chris- 
tian worker from within or without the city), the 
audience of members, friends, and strangers and the 
after meeting, strengthened the belief that Christ him- 
self is the solution of every girl's every problem, and 
that it is the business of the Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association to help girls find this out. 

A hospitality offered for many years by the Brook- 
lyn Young Women's Christian Association was the 
Sunday evening supper after the Bible class, to which 
thirty-five guests remained each week after the gen- 
eral social hour which followed the assembly room 
service. The vesper tea of Association House, 
Chicago, played a great part in the history of the 
Sunday meetings, and these two examples other Asso- 
ciations have imitated, though frequently the break- 
ing of bread together could mean little more than a 
social cup of tea and a sandwich or wafer. 

As to the early Bible classes, they were of two kinds. 
One was the open Bible clals where a text book or 
printed outline might or might not be used, but where 
there was always an opportunity for the members to 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 71 

answer and ask questions based upon a study of a 
prescribed topic or portion of Scripture assigned for 
the lesson. The class period was usually some week 
day evening hour, the teacher some earnest but prob- 
ably self taught Bible student and the attendance at 
the class large or small, dependent almost entirely 
upon the personality of the teacher. Such Bible 
classes have had the most direct evangelistic results. 
Out of one class in Connecticut where the average at- 
tendance for four years was twenty-five, it was said 
that twenty-three had become Christians, and many 
others were brought back into Christian allegiance. 

On the other hand the Worker 's Training Class was 
preferably small, composed of women of spiritual ex- 
perience who wanted to do the work of personal 
evangelism. Upon most of the early convention pro- 
grams this subject was placed to be treated by the 
strongest person available. The names of Mr. C. K. 
Ober, Mr. L. Wilbur Messer and Mr. John R. Mott 
appear in this connection. The latter thus defined a 
Worker's Bible Training class as *'a class which en- 
ables Christians by special Bible studies and by actual 
participation in personal work to lead others one by 
one to Christ." Because of its confidential character, 
this class was almost invariably led by the general 
secretary; manuals were used which had been pub- 
lished by these men and others. 

Once a month the missionary meeting might be 
found on the topic cards for the Sunday afternoon. 
If the meetings were notoriously poor they occurred 



72 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

less often, if they were notably good, ten or twelve a 
year were not too many. In states where the recog- 
nized leaders were Student Volunteers for the foreign 
field who after reaching their appointed posts kept up 
a large personal correspondence, missionary spirit was 
easily cultivated. Kansas and Michigan and Illinois 
owe much to Jennie Sherman, Annie Laurie Adams, 
Jean and Nellie Dick, Emma Silver, Bernice Hunting, 
Belle Richards and Eula Bates in this connection. 

Not until 1894 after the formation of the World's 
Young Women's Christian Association did mission- 
ary giving focus upon distinctly Young Women's 
Christian Association objects. That was after Miss 
R. F. Morse had begun to collect money for the sup- 
port of work done by American secretaries on the for- 
eign field and by the first general secretary of the 
World's Committee, herself an American. 

About the year 1900 there seemed a great enlarge- 
ment of religious activities throughout all the city 
Associations. Such as had been content with one or 
two small classes were multiplying these to meet all 
sorts and conditions of Bible students. Drop-in 
classes were held at the noon hour ; clubs were organ- 
ized which gave the first part of the evening to Bible 
study. Women's morning classes were securing the 
leadership of the best Bible students among the pas- 
tors and whole departments were succeeding the single 
committee which had been expected to carry this es- 
sential burden. More Associations began to call em- 
ployed officers to administer this department under 
the title of Bible Secretary or Religious Work Di- 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 7S 

rector, retaining elsewhere the former title of Chap- 
lain. In such capacities Charlotte H. Adams had 
come to Pittsburgh in 1894 and Dr. Anna L. Brown 
to Boston in 1899. 

Even if the first Young Women's Christian Associ- 
ation had not undertaken to help young women find 
places in which to work they would have been asked 
to do it both by the young women and by the general 
public. Yet probably in no other department has 
there been expressed more lively dissatisfaction than 
here, because in securing a position for an applicant 
there is a double obligation : the bureau hopes to sat- 
isfy both the employer and employee; repeatedly 
neither is satisfied. Even in the best administered 
offices this is bound to happen, since many applicants 
are not qualified by health, training or disposition to 
earn a respectable weekly wage, but they and their 
friends are sure *Hhe society ought to do something 
for them," because the Young Women's Christian 
Association name includes the word Christian, and 
they return after each failure not disappointed in 
themselves, but a little critical of the society which 
has disappointed them. Otherwise keen-sighted peo- 
ple are often slow to appraise the market value of the 
working capacities of dependent members of their 
own families. Since the only permanent employed 
officer in many of the early Associations was the ma- 
tron of the boarding home, whose waking hours were 
filled with discharging her first duties to the residents, 
volunteer committees on employment kept certain 



74 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

hours at the Employment Bureau, meeting would-be 
employers, and girls and women looking for work, 
all the while depending upon the records on the desk 
for continuity of treatment. This method, which 
seems so haphazard and lamentably unscientific as to 
be wholly inadequate, had at least two arguments in 
its favor. The ladies of the committee and board 
knew as individuals the exact situation with which they 
as an organization were trying to cope, and further, 
there was a personal acquaintance revealing sympathy 
and desire to help, which often reached a happy out- 
come even if not the outcome either had at first an- 
ticipated. Many a girl who came to learn *'how to 
make a living" has found through the employment 
bureau *'how to make a life." Mrs. E. P. Terhune, 
president of the Women's Christian Association of 
Newark, New Jersey, read a paper at the Pittsburgh 
conference in 1875, pleading for the moral courage 
in American families to have the daughters taught 
some useful trade, not profession, to be selected with 
wise regard to her taste and aptitude. So much more 
difficult was it also considered to find places for teach- 
ers, governesses, saleswomen, seamstresses, etc., than 
for domestic helpers that Philadelphia, New York and 
other Associations exerted all their energies within 
these and similar occupations, leaving the other plac- 
ings to agencies already established. Certain other 
Associations held, however, that many of the existing 
agencies were commercial and that the Association 
had more to give an applicant than a mere statement 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 75 

of how many there were in the family and the weekly 
remuneration she might expect. 

Contrasts between labor conditions in the home and 
out of the home were constantly discussed and philoso- 
phies were based upon the advantages and disadvan- 
tages of both. One analysis of the domestic worker's 
position was made in 1873 with the greatest frank- 
ness. *^It must be admitted that the amount of ab- 
solute labor required of a housemaid is often entirely 
disproportioned to her strength. Think of a single 
girl doing the washing and ironing for a family of 
ten people, more than half of whom are adults; and 
at the same time, with only the help of a nurse girl, 
who must be ready to take baby at any time, doing 
all the other work of the family, the cooking, sweep- 
ing, scrubbing, dusting, washing dishes and tending. 
To do this she must begin work two hours before male 
laborers, and continue at it until two hours after 
they are through, unless she be one of the exception- 
ally quick handed. For this she is fortunate if she 
receives the sum of three dollars per week, an amount 
entirely inadequate to the amount of service rendered. 
Why, even the washing and ironing of such a family 
is of itself enough to occupy a girl for full three days 
in the week, if the labor were as equally parcelled out 
to her as it is by the contractor to his men who sweep 
the streets. The sewing machine has added im- 
mensely to the work of the laundress in multiplying 
tucks and puffs and ruffles. The complications of 
trimming with which even one garment is adorned, 



76 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

require as much time in crimping and pressing and 
fluting as would have served for half an ironing in 
an old fashioned family. If we are told that pecuni- 
ary circumstances will not justify the employment of 
a laundress, or indeed of any more expenditure in 
the direction of help, we inquire, why must restric- 
tions in expense be confined to this particular depart- 
ment of a home? If clean clothing, well cooked food 
and prompt and orderly service is a necessity why 
not curtail from the luxuries in order to secure it? 
We think there will have to be concessions before we 
can expect cheerful and contented helpers in our fam- 
ilies. The drudgeries will have to be provided for, 
even if it be at the expense of indulgence in other di- 
rections.'' It is humiliating to realize that forty 
years later this is still an unstandardized occupation, 
although the Commission on Domestic Service ap- 
pointed by the National Board to report at the Con- 
vention of 1915 showed that it was not disregarded. 

All the three earliest Associations carried on work 
for a couple of years before a boarding house was 
opened and in this time were mindful of that clause 
in their constitution about aiding young women *'in 
the selection of suitable boarding places," but there 
was a basic conviction in the hearts of members of 
the administrative boards that to provide a Christian 
home for girls was an obligation they might not long 
postpone. 

The story of how the Women's Christian Associa- 
tion of St. Louis achieved its end might almost be a 






CITY DEVELOPMENT 77 

chapter from tlie recording secretary's minutes or 
the annual report of any of the pioneer Associations. 
A committee was appointed to lease a building suit- 
able both to the wants of a large growing city and to 
the financial ability of the Association. A new build- 
ing with a sunny corner exposure presented itself. 
It contained about thirty rooms; there was a dining 
room extending the width of the building, also pantry, 
laundry, cellars, etc. In order for the unincorporated 
society to be able to secure the house for a year, a 
gentleman interested offered to take the lease from 
the landlord and receive the rent from the board as 
it could be raised. An appeal which was then sent to 
the Protestant churches asking each to furnish one 
or more rooms met with so prompt a response that in 
a month the home was formally opened. Inspection 
showed parlor and library at the left of the main en- 
trance, on the right an office and a sewing room. For 
the equipment of the sewing room two loaves of cake 
had been sold ''On 'Change" and four sewing ma- 
chines ("Wheeler & "Wilson, Singer, Florence, Grover 
and Baker) had been donated. The many bedrooms 
were "furnished in a becomingly neat and homelike 
manner, the walls hung with pictures, the mantels 
ornamented with vases, the black walnut sets of fur- 
niture cosily set in, the table with its bright covering, 
the beds faultlessly white, all speak of comfort if not 
of luxury." Within eight months one hundred and 
nine boarders were received, of whom twenty-three 
were seamstresses, ten were students, and the others 
variously employed. The reference committer gave 



7» FIFTY YEAES OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

preference to the younger girls as permanent resi- 
dents, and the price of board ranged from three and 
a half to five dollars. Change and lack of work made 
the income uncertain, especially in the summer, and 
the Executive Committee asked for a contingent fund 
to relieve specific needs, since some of the members 
of the family were left at times without means of 
support except a share of the orders which came in 
to the sewing room as piece work. 

For purposes of administration in this boarding 
home in St. Louis there were at first committees on 
the Home, Admission, Supply, Visiting, Lectures, etc. 
The first September there was added a Committee on 
Social and Intellectual Culture which assisted in or- 
ganizing ''a club for intellectual improvement by 
means of reading, etc.," which met each week in the 
parlor, and arranged social functions for members and 
friends. There was also a Eeligious Committee, al- 
though the chief religious service was house prayers 
conducted each evening after supper by the superin- 
tendent, Mrs. Shepard Wells. Frequently a city pas- 
tor took charge of the devotional hour. 

Winter homes began to be a necessity, but summer 
homes were a luxury. The first venture of this kind 
was made in 1874 by Philadelphia. Its long cher- 
ished hope for an Association residence offering rest 
and recreation during the summer months was sud- 
denly realized when Mr. James A. Bradley donated 
a lot at Asbury Park, New Jersey, one of the favorite 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 79 

beaches of the Atlantic Coast, only a short ride dis- 
tant from Philadelphia. Prompt measures were 
taken to erect a building and that very season **Sea 
Best" was opened. Later additions enabled the house 
to accommodate one hundred and twelve guests and 
as the usual stay was limited to two weeks and the 
inclusive price for board was little over three dollars 
a week, many hundreds of women every year were 
able to enjoy the sea air and ocean bathing, to whom 
a sea side visit or even a change from city life would 
otherwise have been virtually impossible. On Conan- 
icut Island in Narragansett Bay the Providence As- 
sociation leased two farm houses in 1878 and fur- 
nished them for a vacation home conducted on much 
the same plan. In some Associations parties were 
made up to go to Vacation Lodges for week ends, or 
for a longer stay. 

Kest Cottage, which the heroic invalid Jennie Cas- 
siday founded and bequeathed to the Women's Chris- 
tian Association of Louisville, was like the others in 
its aim to be a house for which Christ was the recog- 
nized head. She herself used each week to send a 
letter here to be read after Sunday morning prayers, 
and in this was always a bit of Bible exposition which 
she had worked out in hours of pain and thought, or 
as in this one case, had quoted from another: *'In 
Galatians, the fifth chapter, one reads of the fruit of 
the spirit. Love is the first thing and all else can be 
put into it. Joy is love exulting; peace is love in re- 
pose; long suffering is love on trial; gentleness is 



80 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

love in society; goodness is love in action; faith is 
love on the battlefield ; meekness is love at school, and 
temperance is love in training/' 

The personal element which pervaded this Vacation 
House has also been felt in the Summer Cottage of the 
Milwaukee Association at Genesee Lake, Wisconsin, 
which Mr. Walter Lindsay put up in 1896 in memory 
of his wife, Mary Knowles, one of the charter mem- 
bers in Milwaukee. With its fifty acres of land it is 
what might be called a ''self contained" estate, for 
rowing, swimming, tramping and extensive nature 
study may be enjoyed without leaving the premises. 

Amazing discoveries were made from time to time 
by every group of people who thought at all on what 
people are pleased to call Association problems. One 
discovery was that not so large a proportion of non- 
residents in comparison to real citizens as had been 
superficially supposed made use of even the privileges 
of the Association, to say nothing of cooperating in 
such a way that they would initiate further privileges 
which might be still further extended. Dependent 
upon this is the second discovery, namely, that there 
are not, as reckoned by the census, as many non-resi- 
dent as citizen young women in the majority of cities. 
If these discoveries were made by the board or ac- 
cepted by them, which for practical purposes is all 
the same, their attention was paid to young women 
who did not need shelter, as generously as it was af- 
forded those for whom this led the train of necessi- 
ties. Boston recognized this when the Beach Street 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 81 

houses were opened and the dining room was con- 
ducted on the restaurant plan open to outsiders, but 
since that same dining room must cater to the resident 
family, it fell so far short in that requirement that 
when the Warrenton Street home was opened the fam- 
ily table was made the unit. The early Associations 
were too simply organized and too insufficiently 
equipped to meet the four separate issues which must 
be faced between eleven and two o'clock daily by 
an Association actually satisfying its natural constit- 
uency, which calls for a large central lunch room with 
rapid service and low prices to accommodate girls who 
are down town every day and want to make their noon 
hour reach around luncheon and errands; a well ap- 
pointed lunch room with attractive menu and service 
for people who are willing to spend time and money 
to obtain them and, like to find them in the Association ; 
a seven days in the week dining room arranged as to 
hours of meals and other features for transient guests 
whose rooms may be in the same building or in private 
homes in the neighborhood; and besides these, the 
family table of the Association residence, where menu, 
service, grace at meals, personal acquaintance and con- 
versation are such as might be found in any Christian 
household and can be observed here even though this 
be a family of forty. Much of the bitter criticism 
of the Young Women's Christian Association which, 
so far as the public press is concerned, is usually lim- 
ited to the boarding home, comes from trying to unite 
these four features with one dining room, one matron 
and one domestic staff. 



82 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Tlie first conspicuous attempt to afford a woman's 
hotel to distinctly transient guests was made by the 
New York City Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion in 1891, when the "Margaret Louisa" was opened 
at 14 East 16th Street. The beautiful building con- 
tained rooms for seventy young women, a restaurant 
seating one hundred and twelve and was given en- 
tirely equipped, by the one donor, Mrs. Elliott F. 
Shepard. 

When the Philadelphia boarding home department 
was well under way a lodging home under another 
roof was added and a restaurant was opened in 1872, 
which was visited within a year by one hundred or 
more girls and women each noon. A substantial din- 
ner of meat and vegetables was served for from ten 
to twenty cents or soup with bread at a charge of five 
cents. One day when a record was kept it was found 
that forty-three persons had secured a meal for five 
cents and the other seventy-one had dined at an aver- 
age price of not more than seven or eight cents. After 
a time one comer of the room was railed in, carpeted 
and supplied with reading matter and made into a 
pleasant waiting or lounging place. 

At its very organization in 1883 Baltimore decided 
to offer both mental and physical food, and the com- 
mittee appointed to secure rooms were charged to find 
such as were suitable for reading room, lunch room 
and kitchen. In less than two months these rooms 
were found in the central part of the city and scores 
of girls had enjoyed the savory meals, the few min- 
utes' peaceful loitering in the bright cozy parlor 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 83 

where newspapers, magazines, and books were at hand, 
and the personal acquaintance with members of the 
employment and lunch committees who were always 
present. It is worthy of notice that ^\e years later 
when the Baltimore Association had entered its new 
building it referred to these first quarters as the 
shabby upper room, approached through a dark alley 
up a rickety flight of outside steps, where the Young 
Women's Christian Association established herself, a 
veritable Cinderella among her elder sisters, treated 
with contempt by many of those whom she wished to 
serve. 

Perhaps the credit of naming this combination of 
luncheon with other features may be awarded to 
Poughkeepsie, which in 1886 described its ''Noon 
Hour Rest'* as a place "where neatly spread lunch 
tables are in readiness every noon from twelve to one 
o'clock for the accommodation of girls who bring their 
lunch to their places of employment. Hot coffee, tea 
and milk are served at a very small fee. From its 
lunch room the girls bring their work into our sunny 
pleasant parlor, where music, reading and conversa- 
tion make the noon hour the shortest of the day." 
Soon the Noon Rest had swept the country ; the name 
was popular, the idea back of it was exactly what 
many had been looking for — an invitation to bring 
or buy luncheon as one preferred and to expect to re- 
main for the rest of the noon hour. Concerts, Bible 
classes, popular talks, brief programs by artists en- 
tertaining in the city, fancy work instruction, every 
imaginable Association propaganda could be intro- 



84 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

duced, in case the guest could finish her luncheon in 
time to enjoy some of these features and get back to 
desk or counter within sixty minutes. 

Private school alumnae associations helped annihi- 
late the time difficulty with the self service plan called 
** Cafeteria.'' Probably Kansas City, Missouri, was 
the first Young Women's Christian Association to in- 
stall this system, modelled after the Ogontz Club in 
the Pontiac Building in Chicago, and its neighbor, 
the Wildwood Club, maintained by Miss Kirkland's 
School. The room first opened in March, 1891, and 
was soon exchanged for a larger one, where the mem- 
bers passed between the brass rail and the counter, 
studied the menu poster, selected tray, cold foods, 
hot foods, waited for the penciled check, spread the 
table, ate and talked, carried back dishes and paid 
their way out at the other door in the same time they 
would ordinarily have spent waiting for a table and 
the return of the waitress with the food they had 
ordered. The novelty attracted attention, small cit- 
ies with limited equipment and few departments of 
wide appeal could do a service to the women of the 
town which was readily appreciated, and the small 
expense of supervision and labor made it pay almost 
without exception. 

^'To have a good time, to get to know each other" 
— ^these were the goals to which the social department 
committees set their united front, even when an As- 
sociation was so small that one person as a committee 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 85 

of the whole planned most of the good times and the 
members already knew each other. 

A cardinal point of the Association compass was 
the feeling against calling entertainments for revenue 
only, social affairs. If the scheme for such had arisen 
in the finance committee or in a ways and means com- 
mittee hoping for a new building or despairing over 
an old mortgage, to such committee should belong the 
labor and glory of putting it through. Both labor 
and glory were of a surety involved in such mammoth 
manoeuvres as the Exposition of Authors in St. Louis 
in 1875, and the Great Bazaar which the New York 
Association held ten years later in the Academy of 
Music, opened by the chairman, Mrs. D. H. McAlpin, 
and the Governor of the State, Samuel J. Tilden, for 
which Mr. R. C. Morse was chairman of the Press 
Committee, and which printed a daily paper to which 
Bryant, Holmes, Holland and other eminent authors 
contributed. 

Entertainments in which members took part or to 
which membership tickets admitted them, or which 
collected a small sum for delegates' expenses, some- 
thing for which no appeal was made to the outside 
public, and yet from which the young women gained 
real pleasure, were not barred out of this category, 
as the returns were measured by a good time, not by 
increased funds. Holidays have always been scrupu- 
lously observed and the best publicity on behalf of 
membership was found to be the souvenirs which 
girls carried home from Hallowe 'en or Valentine 



86 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

festivities and exhibited to their friends the next 
day. 

But the Associations kept growing larger and the 
social committees which had been arranging one gath- 
ering each month and worrying over the budget basis 
therefor, realized that the occasions most enjoyed were 
not those when they had tried to cater to the entire 
membership, although their concept of democracy 
tried so to convince them. The times most keenly 
enjoyed were the social hours in connection with some 
regular work through which girls had begun to know 
each other, and whose acquaintance could be deep- 
ened, where newcomers could be welcomed into a cir- 
cle which they would meet again and again. The pic- 
nic supper of the bicycle club, the birthday party for 
a teacher or secretarj^, the celebration for which 
guests were invited to the boarding home, all these 
could be planned for by the participants with as much 
hilarity as was actually enjoyed on the evening in 
question, and the social committee proper could con- 
centrate on the large affairs. The lunch room 
equipment was put to use, and banquets brought out 
the members for the annual business meeting of the 
Association. Open house on New Year's Day or on 
Washington's Birthday was a time for cooperating 
with the Young Men's Christian Association. Sum- 
mer picnics in parks and winter picnics in gymnasi- 
ums — every season was utilized. 

A new conception of democracy was acknowledged. 
That democracy in which girls could plan their good 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 87 

times in connection with their classes led on to the 
clubs, where working together made a short cut to 
a new social life, or playing together. Outside of the 
Girls' Branches, where the children's office-holding 
had the club flavor, the first real self governing club 
may have been that resulting from Miss Grace H. 
Dodge's visit to Baltimore in 1887. In the Harlem 
Association in 1894 the prevailing spirit seemed to 
be club spirit, for that year the Birthday Building 
Club, the Literary Club, and the Annex Choral Club 
all voted themselves into life, to be followed in 1895 
by the Colgate Chrysanthemum Club, which either 
because of its brilliant name, or of the relation held 
to it by Miss R. P. Morse, who had been associated in 
club life with Miss Dodge, seemed to hold the front 
of the platform for many years. 

In the days when there were no free public li- 
braries, and memberships in corporate libraries or 
rentals for books were costly, in the days when there 
were no free evening schools, in the days when there 
was no available trade or technical instruction for 
girls, in the days when household arts had not been 
academically formulated, the Christian Association, 
which recognized mental culture as a necessity in the 
whole development of young womanhood, undertook 
to collect libraries, teach English branches and gen- 
eral subjects, provide classes preparing the pupils for 
self support, and gather the untrained into classes in 
sewing, cooking and other domestic accomplishments. 
But even when these educational agencies appeared 



88 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

in community after community the city Associations 
had still their task before them in making books ac- 
cessible to busy girls, or cultivating or guiding their 
choice in reading ; in supplj^ing evening classes at the 
hours when employed young women could attend, and 
for such blocks of time as they could devote to study, 
also in stimulating them to begin and heartening them 
to continue ; in studying the labor market and opening 
classes from which graduates could reasonably hope 
to go into occupations for which they had showed nat- 
ural aptitude; and in seizing the first opportunity to 
secure teachers of the common household subjects 
which everybody declared all girls should understand, 
but for teaching which no provision had apparently 
ever been made. 

For many years the word "Library," as applied 
to Young Women's Christian Associations, custom- 
arily presented to the mental vision a room contain- 
ing shelves and a table for reading matter, not a col- 
lection of books for which shelf space had been pro- 
vided. Lacking a library endowment, the supply of 
books depended upon occasional "book socials'^ where 
friends cheerfully parted with books they thought 
girls ought to read, because they knew they them- 
selves did not wish to read them, or upon spasmodic 
efforts of the library committee to secure the price 
of a certain new book from an individual donor. 
Lacking a librarian the distribution was restricted too 
often to fixed hours of attendance by the library com- 
mittee, hours which were not always frequent enough 
to accommodate many people whose weekly visits to 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 89 

the building might not coincide with them, though for 
those who could attend it was very satisfactory. The 
other method, free access to the shelves at all times 
by the patrons, who selected their own books and 
made note of such as they withdrew, resulted in a 
more general use. More books were taken out and 
vastly more failed to come back. 

Just as a pleasing notion once prevailed that or- 
ganized Christian work for young women could be 
postponed until the young men of a city had been 
adequately and permanently taken care of in these 
respects, so there seemed to be an unwritten declara- 
tion of confidence that any girl who would be at- 
tracted to a Young Women's Christian Association 
by a library was of such serious tastes that she "did 
not really need the Association" so much as others, 
and hence efforts that might have built up a library 
were directed toward equipping a gymnasium or put- 
ting an addition on the boarding home. Occasional 
exceptions to this state of things were York, Penn- 
sylvania, among the smaller, and New York City 
among the larger Associations. 

Go teach the orphan boy to read, 
The orphan girl to sew, 

was the scathing advice meted out to Lady Clara 
Vere de Vere by the first person in Tennyson's poem. 
Not the orphan, however, but the Lady Clara was to 
benefit from the process, and so in the primitive years 
of Association education where a class was formed be- 
cause there was an available volunteer teacher, where 



90 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

there was no thought of payment, where the number 
of lessons in the term depended on how soon a class 
could be got under way, and how long the teacher 
would meet the class or could hold it together, the 
benefit accruing was as often to the teacher as the 
class. For example, a tall school teacher all through 
a long cold winter regularly met a class in which a 
little dressmaker was the most devoted student. By 
spring the dressmaker had found her chance in a pre- 
paratory school where she could partly earn her way, 
and the teacher was communicating with a home mis- 
sion board concerning a new sort of teaching. Sta- 
tistical reports would have been too voluminous to 
print if all the similar incidents in fifty years of edu- 
cational classes could have been written out. 

"Without question common English branches and 
fancy needle work were taught to small groups in al- 
most every city Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion, and many of those which bore the name Women's 
Christian Association, but Boston definitely reports 
a class in singing the first year (1866), and a little 
later classes in astronomy, physiology, penmanship, 
bookkeeping, botany and history. Leaving at one side 
for a moment the trade or teachnical classes, we find 
in New Haven and other cities classes in entertaining 
reading, then German, current events, drawing, Eng- 
lish literature, First Aid to the Injured, choir music, 
elocution, Latin, and French. Most of the Boston 
topics are repeated here and there except astronomy. 
No other educational committee seemed ever to have 
the ambition to hitch its wagon to a star. As work 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 91 

went on and courses were more definitely outlined, 
fixed school terms, class fees, paid teachers, both day 
and evening sessions, and certificates for completed 
courses were gradually introduced. 

But it is in the realm of classes in which students 
prepared for remunerative positions that the service 
of the Young Women 's Christian Association has been 
most hugely appreciated by young women, and by the 
community at large. The need for encouraging young 
women to fit themselves for self support was one of 
the first lessons borne in upon employment committees 
and boards of directors, and they determined in offer- 
ing such classes to make the hours, scope of work, 
rates, and all circumstances convenient and beneficial 
to intending students. As early as 1868 bookkeeping 
was taught in connection with penmanship. The 
Civil War had called women into offices and clerical 
training was in demand. In 1874 Philadelphia in- 
troduced telegraphy. In 1880 New York City made 
a success of a class in phonography, the practice of 
which in connection with typewriting was said to be 
the "most remunerative for their sex''; later on type- 
writing alone was advertised with the explanation that 
''some firms prefer typewriting to penmanship." In 
1880 retouching photograph negatives was taught and 
a class of eight competent women graduated, then 
photo coloring, crayons, and India ink drawing, and 
in 1884 technical design and free hand enlarging. 

In Boston and New York and elsewhere the busi- 
ness branches soon grew into a commercial depart- 



92 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

ment or mercantile school. After eight years the 
superintendent in the former city was able to say 
they had as yet had no pupil returned to them as in- 
competent. Care was always taken to inculcate a 
sense of the responsibility of a stenographer's posi- 
tion and the confidential nature of the information 
of her employer's affairs which she possessed. Most 
pronounced has been the success of the art department 
or school of the New York City Association, which 
in course of time offered a three years' course fitting 
graduates for positions in numerous fields of art and 
applied design. Silver and gold medals have repeat- 
edly been given this Association for exhibits at In- 
ternational Fairs and Expositions here and abroad. 

No doubt the parallel of Lady Clara Vere de Vere 's 
efforts — if she did make the attempt — to teach the 
orphan girl to sew, would have been found in the 
many industrial schools undertaken by churches and 
missions and by many Women's Christian Associa- 
tions. But the instruction in sewing, dressmaking, 
and millinery given to young women who wished this 
skill as a personal accomplishment, or a means of 
earning a living, is the more natural theme in this 
study of Industrial Education in the Christian As- 
sociation movement. 

If the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 was to 
have a permanent effect upon industrial and mechan- 
ical arts, there was also an American event of that 
same year which affected women's industrial relations 
in a, degree previously unbelievable. This was the 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 93 

perfection of the sewing macliine, by which in that 
one year Wheeler & Wilson brought out the circular 
bobbin type, Singer the vertical needle and shuttle 
type, and Grover and Baker the double needle and 
two spools type of machine, all based upon certain 
of the original features which Elias Howe, commonly 
called **the father of the sewing machine," had pat- 
ented in 1846. These were followed in 1857 by Wil- 
cox and Gibbs' single thread machines, and after 
1867, when royalties were removed, many others ap- 
peared in the market. Pessimistic communications of 
the period indicate that "woman's weapon, the 
needle,'* had somehow been turned against her. Ma- 
chines were so expensive that two dollars was paid 
for daily rent of one, if a seamstress wished, or was 
obliged to cater to customers who looked for modish 
machine stitching instead of hand sewing. 

In every boarding home where the occupations of 
the residents were enumerated in any available rec- 
ord, seamstresses always headed the list, and needle- 
women might also be listed under other classifications 
as well, when they were machine operators upon one 
specified product, such as vest makers and cap mak- 
ers. This proportion would have been higher if the 
seamstresses, who were given room and board during 
their engagements in private homes, could have had 
rooms over Sunday regularly reserved for them by 
the Association and thus have been enrolled, but there 
were usually so many applicants for the full seven 
days of the week that any two day plan seemed im- 
possible, although the hardship it worked to the seam- 



94. FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

stresses was recognized by the Association and openly- 
regretted. The sewing room in the St. Louis board- 
ing home has already been noted as one means in help- 
ing the seamstresses to keep their economic footing 
in these perilous transition times. 

One remembers that the Ladies' Christian Union 
of New York City had been organized twelve years 
before it established the Young Ladies' Branch. As 
was both desirable and inevitable, maintenance of 
their Association boarding home had led to the estab- 
lishment of an employment bureau and this was trans- 
ferred to the Branch, which endeavored to find places 
for teachers, housekeepers, first class seamstresses, etc. 
More than this, they set aside quarters for a fine 
needlework department for which were donated **One 
best Wheeler and Wilson sewing machine from Hon- 
orable Peter Cooper, one best Singer sewing machine 
donated from the French Fair by the subscription of 
several ladies, one Elliptic best sewing machine from 
St. Luke's department of the Methodist Fair voted 
to the Association by numerous friends." A dozen 
more Elliptic machines were furnished by a gentleman 
who also gave the services of a competent teacher. 
In February, 1872, a class in machine sewing began, 
which later on graduated thirty-two members, most 
of whom at once secured good positions. That fall 
Wheeler and Wilson extended a similar courtesy in 
furnishing machines and teachers, but later on the 
department paid its instructors and bought machines 
of various makes. The class beginning that fall 
worked four hours daily for four weeks, and supple- 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 95 

merited the mechanical instruction with a hand finish- 
ing course in order to learn the nicer details of sew- 
ing and become fully prepared to enter families as 
seamstresses. Springfield, Massachusetts, taught ma- 
chine operating as women came in with their own 
sewing to the rooms for a social evening. German- 
town, Pennsylvania, conducted a sewing school regu- 
larly four evenings of the week for girls employed in 
mills during the day. 

A three months' period of instruction from 8 A. m. 
to 5 P. M. was required in the industrial school which 
the Young Ladies' Branch of the Cincinnati Associa- 
tion conducted at this time. It had both a primaiy 
and a dressmaking department. Sewing was included 
in the curriculum of both the Boston and St. Louis 
training schools and out of sewing classes came the 
students for the dressmaking classes, and the cutting 
and fitting classes with costume design as an ultimate 
goal. 

While ''almost every one" could teach sewing in 
popular estimation, if she were herself a skilled seam- 
stress and dressmaker, the science of cooking waited 
for its general presentation until there were competent 
professional teachers of the subject. 

It is said that the modern form of instruction in 
the Household Arts sprang from the renewed inter- 
est in all these lines at the time of the Centennial Ex- 
position in Philadelphia in 1876, but cooking had been 
already reduced to academic terms in the State Agri- 
cultural College of Iowa at Ames (1869), in the Kan- 



96 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

sas Agricultural College at Manhattan, and in the 
Illinois Industrial University (later the University 
of Illinois) at Urbana in 1874. Here Lou Allen 
(later Mrs. Gregory) taught household science in the 
*' first college course of high grade in the United 
States, if not in the world." Eastern progress cen- 
tered around distinguished teachers of cooking who 
began as lecturers and demonstrators. One of these 
authorities was Juliet Corson, who started in 1874 a 
free Training School for Women in New York City. 
A ladies' cooking class was formed the next year and 
in 1876 in her own home she opened the New York 
Cooking School. From January to April, 1879, there 
was an attendance of 6,560 in public and private 
classes under her direction. In 1877 she copyrighted 
a Cooking School Text Book. New England was led 
in this movement by ]\Iaria Parloa who lectured in 
New London in 1876 and in Boston in 1877, opening 
that fall a school on Tremont Street. The next year 
she organized a Domestic Science department in La- 
sell Seminary, Auburndale, Mass., and the following 
year she lectured at the assembly of the Chautauqua 
Literary and Scientific Circle, at Chautauqua, New 
York, and at the Boston Cooking School which had 
been founded that same year. Its principal was Mrs. 
D. A. Lincoln. 

Attention has already been given to the instruction 
in cooking which the Boston Association in 1879 gave 
to members of the Training School for Domestics, also 
the day and evening classes for general students, and 
the class from the Winthrop School in the spring of 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 97 

1880. Educational authorities say that instruction in 
household subjects in Boston was at its start supported 
by private funds in classes outside the school, and the 
claim that this Boston Association class was the be- 
ginning of cooking lessons in the Boston public schools 
has never been disproved. 

In the city of St. Louis there was public sentiment 
favoring the establishment of a cooking school, and 
the Association had been hoping and working for a 
training school in which cooking instruction should 
find a place. Consequently at their invitation Miss 
Corson came out in April, 1881, and gave a series of 
ten morning and afternoon lessons which were so 
well attended as to net $1,200 for the Association 
treasury, and the interest in cooking as a domestic 
accomplishment as well as a trade was extended. By 
the fall of 1882 a house had been leased and various 
ladies had gathered up classes from among their own 
acquaintance to start the movement. 

Young ladies' cooking clubs in the early eighties 
were popular social functions throughout the country 
and many of the Association classes were more social 
than technical in character. One finds records that 
' ' six brides-to-be "or " six young men going camping ' ' 
were enrolled here and there. In 1887 there were 
already Association classes in Cincinnati, "Worcester, 
Poughkeepsie and New Haven, usually under teachers 
trained in Boston. The Connecticut city held a course 
during July and August for a class composed of 
sixty-eight pupils, largely girls employed by the day 
in stores and factories. 



98 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

While the laboratory method was partially em- 
ployed, in that every pupil had a hand in the prepara- 
tion of the food, yet individual equipment was rarely 
introduced before the late nineties, after which time 
it was considered essential. Milwaukee made an in- 
novation by including a model apartment of parlor, 
bedroom, dining room and kitchen in its building, 
dedicated in 1901, and here housekeeping as well as 
cooking could be properly demonstrated. 

As the local Associations became better equipped 
they were in a position to receive classes in dietetics 
from nurses' training schools and other public insti- 
tutions. Up to the present time (1916) no Associa- 
tion has undertaken to give complete training for 
nurses, but the need in every home of at least one 
member able to give something better than the over- 
devoted, under-intelligent care of the sick common 
in most families has led many Associations to oiffer 
a trained attendant's course. The Brooklyn Associa- 
tion gave much attention to discovering new types of 
women's work and in 1890 opened a course of train- 
ing to fit women for convalescent and chronic cases 
as a salaried occupation. Dr. Eliza Mosher and other 
physicians helped lay out the course and gave part 
of the lectures. Qualified women who completed the 
course of forty lessons were able even at first to secure 
salaries of from eight to twelve dollars per week. 
Others discovered their own talents and began regu- 
lar hospital training. 

While it would be a gratification to study the mer- 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 99 

its of the different systems of physical education, and 
to believe that the various Associations discussed these 
before introducing this department, yet the truth is 
that the Young Women's Christian Associations were 
largely following in the wake of all sorts of influences 
and practices already active in the communities. To 
some people physical education meant gymnastics as 
strenuously exemplified by the Turn Vereins of the 
resident German-Americans. This meant to them a 
hall with heavy apparatus, acrobatic feats and Sun- 
day parades. To others it meant a Young Men's 
Christian Association building with a gymnasium, 
baths, a salaried director and a large budget. To 
many others it meant that misconception or dilution 
or caricature of Dr. Dio Lewis' adaptation of the 
Swedish free movements which under the name of 
'* calisthenics" appeared on the daily program of the 
public schools. This succeeded through the first com- 
mands of ** stand up straight, shoulders back," in 
curving the spines of the executors of the orders, until 
the violent thumping of clenched fists upon flat little 
chests, accompanied by vocal counting 4-4 time, had 
somewhat counter-balanced the affliction. To some a 
little later it meant '^Delsarte," which being com- 
monly interpreted by a young woman who had ' ' taken 
a course of lessons" meant throwing the weight on 
the ball of the foot, and with the wrist leading, and 
the eye following the hand, going rhythmically and 
to soft, slow, sad music, through classic postures of 
the torso where must be strength, and angelic wavings 
of the extremities where must be freedom. 



100 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

When gymnasium classes were formed the system 
adopted depended upon the physical director secured, 
and the extent of her teaching depended upon the 
place which was called gymnasium and the amount 
of equipment it could or did contain. Hope Narey 
in Boston, Mary S. Dunn in Kansas City, and Abby 
S. Mayhew in Minneapolis were three creative phys- 
ical directors to whom the entire Young Women's 
Christian Association movement in America and 
abroad owes deference and gratitude. As Boston had 
shown ingenuity in fastening up chest weights — the 
first practical developing appliance in this field — ^to 
the doorways of a boarding home, so other Associa- 
tions used their rented rooms in such a way that 
every square foot of floor space served a multiple pur- 
pose, for the one large area must be lunch room at 
noon, assembly hall on Sunday, social center at the 
demand of the entertainment committee and gym- 
nasium whenever classes were scheduled. 

By 1887 Philadelphia, Poughkeepsie, and New 
York City reported classes in light calisthenics ac- 
companied by the. piano. The next year Coldwater, 
Michigan, and Newburgh, New York, had the same, 
but Scranton, Pennsylvania, had fitted up a room for 
a gymnasium with rings, Indian clubs, dumb bells, 
wands and a chestweight. Worcester was holding 
four classes weekly in *' physical culture including 
voice training." More than in any other department 
democracy was felt here. A gymnasium suit and 
team play obliterated social and educational parti- 
tions. With the recognition of the bod^ as the tern- 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 101 

pie of the Holy Spirit old members got a new vision 
of a complete life and new members began to ''be- 
lieve in the Young Women's Christian Association." 
After this time a gymnasium must be reckoned with 
in organizing an Association and in renting rooms or 
planning a new building. Board members realized 
its value and glibly answered questions and argued 
that the work itself combined strength and elasticity 
of muscle with beauty and grace of movement. 

"Worcester, Brooklyn and Newburgh were among 
the early owners of gymnasiums constructed in their 
buildings, but not till Buffalo and Montgomery in 
1905 succeeded to Young Men's Christian Association 
buildings did any Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion give swimming instruction in their swimming 
pool. Later on a pool, or merely a plunge, began to 
be thought a requisite for any organization of this 
character. 

Lord Shaftesbury showed his interest in the protec- 
tion of young girls by paying for placards which the 
several railroad companies allowed to be put up in 
the terminal stations of London in 1885. These gave 
addresses of Young Women's Christian Association 
Homes and Institutes both in London and provincial 
towns, from which representatives would come to meet 
upon application any girls arriving in the city who 
had no friends there to look after them. This was 
in connection with a Traveler's Aid department and 
secretary working at 17 Old Cavendish Street, when 
that address was headquarters of the London Associa- 



102 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

tion. So strongly was the pressing need for protec- 
tion brought out by the press at that time, that the 
necessity of a movement to unite forces willing to help 
and to avoid overlapping was felt. A meeting was 
called at Exeter Hall of some twenty-two different so- 
cieties engaged among women and girls and a per- 
manent union effected under the name of the Trav- 
eler's Aid Society, with a standing committee of men 
and women. Lady Frances Balfour was president 
and her associates represented the Girls' Friendly 
Society, Young Women's Help Society, Metropolitan 
Association for Befriending Young Servants, the Re- 
formatory and Refuge Union, Protective and Rescue 
Society for Jewish Girls, National Vigilance Associa- 
tion and Girls' Helpful Society. One might say that 
it was *'in bound" travelers whom this society was 
to assist, but for *'out bound" passengers the British 
ladies had already been concerned for nearly thirty 
years through their connection with the British 
Ladies' Female Emigration Society. But the out- 
bound travelers of the old world became the inbound 
travelers of the new, and both British agencies had 
been long in communication with Association homes 
and friends in America before the Boston Young 
Women's Christian Association actually formed a de- 
partment in charge of a secretary (1887). The Chi- 
cago Association in 1888 had a Traveler's Aid de- 
partment and a transient home in connection with it. 
Matrons at stations and ferries were provided in Kan- 
sas City and St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco 
as a beginning. It frequently occurred that long 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 103 

after tlie necessity of this work had so appealed to 
the station officials that they had added the matron 
to the pay rolls of the company, the Association was 
asked to nominate suitable persons to the vacancies, 
and to advise with them about matters much as if she 
represented only the Association. 

In the ceaseless debate between the advocates of 
domestic and factory labor, the anti-factory speakers 
have cited not only the long hours but the unpleasant 
surroundings of factory and mill operatives. In this 
regard the same error exists that always makes trouble 
when people generalize about any human beings, 
young versus old, native versus foreign, rich versus 
poor, and attach to hundreds of thousands, the charac- 
teristics or the circumstances that may have pertained 
to a few individuals. The ease with which statistics 
are gathered about manufacturing establishments aids 
this. People easily fancy so many girls, coming from 
such-looking mills, where they have been doing such 
and such things, going along such streets to such 
homes, and flatter themselves that they **know fac- 
tory girls. '* 

It was not with such a spirit that the devoted 
women of the New York Ladies' Christian Associa- 
tion had visited at noon in the American Tract House 
and a hoop skirt factory. They were fresh from an 
uplifting, regenerating, rejuvenating religious experi- 
rience, which made the whole city of New York a 
place for which Christ had died, and although timid 
and hesitant over the ordeal, they found their way 



104. FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

to the places where girls were and at a time when 
they were at liberty. Probably they had personal ac- 
quaintances in these places through whom the visits 
were arranged. It was not such a spirit which 
caused the Germantown Association as soon as it was 
organized to open a night school where sewing and 
other womanly arts were taught, where social life was 
enjoyed and where a Bible class held the main place 
in the weekly program. Many Associations had regu- 
lar campaigns of invitation into workrooms and 
places of business. If it was convenient for the girls 
they boarded at the Association homes and had a hand 
in everything that was going on. There was no dis- 
tinction in membership, but the fact finally had to 
be faced that in many cities the home and business 
localities of thousands of girls were too far away from 
the Association for the rank and file of industrial 
workers to know or care whether there were any 
Young Women's Christian Associations. 

It was then that the people at the center who really 
did know, and really did care, began to think of " ex- 
tending *' the Association to where the girls really 
were. Some Associations, Baltimore (1889), Scran- 
ton (1891) and Milwaukee (1893) found rooms for 
a miniature Association in a part of town nearer the 
homes or the factories. 

Dayton went even further in 1892, and their work- 
ers had a regular Monday appointment at the National 
Cash Register factory, for what was called the **Busy 
Girls' Half Hour" in the workroom after luncheons 
were eaten. Health, dress and morals were themes 



CITY DEVELOPMENT 105 

for practical talks — Bible verses were memorized. 
The meetings, which always opened with prayer, were 
mutual exchanges of ideas about Christian helpfulness, 
for many of the group were leaders in their own 
church organizations. One November day the *'Busy 
Girls'' showed one hundred and seventy-five jars and 
glasses of fruit which they had collected for the Dea- 
coness Hospital; at Easter a similar offering was 
ready. More cities worked out the same plan. 
Charlotte Adams made regular visits to bakeries and 
cigar factories in Pittsburgh, from 1894 on. Maude 
"Wolff's visits in the Milwaukee factories in 1895 are 
another paragraph, as is Isabel Smith's picturesque 
bicycle trip to a Kalamazoo paper mill one May day 
in 1897, carrying a large baker's roll as her text book 
for a talk on the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Her 
comrade was a board member bearing her guitar to 
accompany the gospel hymns sung heartily by men, 
boys, women and girls all seated on bales of rags and 
piles of paper. The clubs that grew out of these, the 
revelations of leadership, the addition of a member 
to the secretarial staff whose sole duty was in indus- 
trial plants, such as Neva Chappell in Minneapolis 
in 1900 — all this is but the preface of a story of which 
we are even now living only the beginning. 

As has been seen, the first building erected con- 
tained dormitories, but in New York City in 1887 a 
new type of structure made its appearance. Under 
the title, ''Certain Forms of Women's Work for 
Women," Helen Campbell contributed an article to 
**The Century Magazine" for June, 1889, which was 



106 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

splendidly illustrated and aroused attention all over 
the country. The bare description of the building 
follows. 

January 18, 1887, saw the dedicatory ceremonies and the 
simple but beautiful building, five stories in height, was 
thrown open for public inspection. Brick with red free- 
stone arches and trimmings was the material employed, terra 
cotta ornamentation being freely used, the result being one 
of the most attractive facades among the many examples of 
good work which New York now offers in this direction. A 
vestibule with tiled floor gives access to a broad hall, 
finished like the entire interior in ash, stained to produce the 
effect of antique oak. Wide double doors open on the west 
side to the social parlor, thirty feet square, with carved 
mantel and cheerful open fire, on the east to the employ- 
ment room and their various offices, while back of both is 
the chapel, running completely across the building and some 
70x40 feet. On the second story is the library running 
across the entire front, two small rooms at each side being 
partitioned off — that on the east as reading and reference 
room, on the west for magazines and periodicals. 

The third, fourth and fifth stories are devoted to the class 
rooms, including typewriting, stenography, machine and 
hand sewing, dress cutting and fitting, bookkeeping and 
arithmetic, and technical design; in short, all the branches 
in which women engaged in over thirty trades may desire 
to fit themselves for more efficient work. In all these, save 
dress cutting and fitting, instruction is free to members 
whose small yearly fee gives opportunities in every direc- 
tion. 

On the fifth floor are two art rooms with artists* sky- 
lights, one of them occupying the entire back of the build- 
ing which is slightly narrower than the front. 

An Industrial Room gives seamstresses an opportunity of 
exhibiting their work, fancy and otherwise, and orders are 
taken for every variety. Monthly entertainments, concerts, 
recitations, et cetera, give needed diversion, and a small 
gymnasium with a skilled teacher ia the satisfactory climax 
of the work undertaken. 




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CITY DEVELOPMENT 107 

This type of administration building was found 
practicable for small as well as large cities, which 
Newburgh and other places soon proved. 

Almost all these departments were matters of evo- 
lution, as were indeed the whole city Associations; 
in a way the Associations were led on, one by one, to 
meet the fundamental necessities of girls: religious 
fellowship and instruction, individual needs of em- 
ployment, protection, housing and food, acquaintance 
with the right kind of friends and books, study for 
culture and self support, physical preparedness for 
life, and a chance to work together in being useful 
to the whole community. 



CHAPTER X 

THE ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 

THE Woman's Student Movement within the 
Young Women's Christian Association had 
its beginning in the coeducational colleges 
of the Middle West. 

Among these may be included the colleges closely 
related to one religious denomination even if not con- 
trolled by it; the state universities of which only the 
undergraduate department was taken into account 
(for the graduate departments were chiefly the schools 
of law, medicine and dentistry, often situated at the 
metropolis of the State, away from the main seat of 
the university, at the state capital or other smaller 
city) ; and the normal schools, which offered an aca- 
demic course of two years beyond college entrance 
requirements. Both colleges and normal schools had 
large preparatory departments enrolling more or less 
mature students who were accepted into college life 
in accordance with their age and ability, not their 
class rating. The exact functions of university, col- 
lege and normal school were not always consciously 
distinguished. Young women chose the state uni- 
versity because of the variety of courses offered, the 
better equipment and the larger faculty. They at- 

108 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 109 

tended their denominational college in their own 
State as a matter of course, or because they lived near 
by .such in case they were of another church connec- 
tion. Aside from the young women who wanted to 
teach school and attended the normal school as the 
logical preparation for their chosen profession, there 
were also the daughters of educationally thrifty par- 
ents who went to a normal school because they could 
fit themselves for self support there in half the time 
it would take if they went to college, a quantitative 
rather than a qualitative analysis of the matter, one 
might almost say. 

For the person seeking the bachelor's degree in arts 
or science in the '70 's or '80 's there was slight varia- 
tion in the courses of most colleges except that Greek, 
in the classical course, added a third year in the 
**prep" department as the scientific course meant 
only two years' preparatory work in which there was 
no Greek. The weekly schedule ran along in solid 
blocks of five, — each of the five days of the week an 
hour long recitation in Latin, one in some other lan- 
guage, one in mathematics, until history and mental 
philosophy and moral philosophy and the other higher 
studies were reached. Alterations in the curriculum 
were gradual and were accomplished mainly by the 
advent of a new professor *^from the East" or the 
return of some distinguished alumnus who ''had been 
East*' fitting himself for an alumni chair. That elec- 
tives were slow in finding a place was not due alone 
to fondness of the Board of Trustees for those sub- 
jects which must be dropped from a student's course 



110 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

in order to allow him a choice — one does not easily 
forget the consternation over the rumor that a col- 
lege proposed to graduate a student without Latin — 
but the delay was also due to the meager resources 
of library and laboratory and the short list of faculty 
members as well. 

Perhaps the faculty was small, but in instance after 
instance it was a faculty of great teachers and great 
men. 

The president was usually an ordained man, from 
some New England storehouse of learning; his classes 
in logic and evidences of Christianity were the meet- 
ing places of souls and minds for students possessed 
of both. When the president did not play the part 
of guide, philosopher and friend, an intellectual giant 
with the heart of a friendly child, there was always 
sure to be some ^* grand old man" on the faculty, from 
whose steadfast personality the character of individu- 
als and the very character of the college caught their 
tone. In two or three instances this ranking person- 
ality was a woman. Usually the preceptress, or lady 
principal, was content to teach four classes in modern 
languages each day, preside over the ladies' dormi- 
tory and administer the rules of the college both for 
town and out of town girls, interpreting and enforc- 
ing the regulations *' concerning the Association 
of ladies and gentlemen/' The faculty sat in a 
row on the rostrum at chapel, and the men 
took turns in giving out the hymns, reading the scrip- 
ture lesson and offering prayer ; but it was the presi- 
dent, or in his absence on preaching or financing tours. 



OEIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 111 

the vice-president, who gave the notices and made talks 
beginning, ''It has been brought to my attention — " 

The college building occupied nttle space on the 
ample campus which had been laid out in the early 
days of the town. Perhaps the college had been the 
motive for building the town. If the chapel were 
larger than the church of the corresponding denomina- 
tion it was the main community audience room. If 
the church were larger it was upon that platform that 
students rehearsed in the unaccustomed rainbow col- 
ored light of a mid-week afternoon, those orations and 
prize declamations, which admiring relatives from all 
over the state would come to hear. 

The men's dormitories rarely had commons, but the 
students made up boarding clubs at private houses, or 
took their meals at the women's hall, or boarded them- 
selves. Sometimes young women were granted per- 
mission by the faculty to set up their own housekeep- 
ing in furnished rooms, and a few girls lived with even 
less expense by working for their board in a family 
which understood and accepted the college hours, 
namely, morning recitations at eight, nine, ten and 
eleven, afternoon classes at two and three o'clock and 
chapel at four. Sometimes chapel began the day in- 
stead of closing it. 

In the denominational college many of tlie faculty 
felt very deeply their responsibility for the ''cure of 
souls" and expressed this not so much in the required 
chapel services as in the mid-week college prayer 
meeting, in the Day of Prayer services on the holi- 
day granted the last Thursday of January, and in 



112 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

those revivals of religion which sometimes followed 
upon that day of prayer or upon the Evangelical 
Alliance Week of Prayer in which the churches united 
the first week of January. To these general services 
must be added the young ladies' prayer meeting, 
which the preceptress led each week and in which 
many a girl, who had made a decision for Christ in a 
larger meeting began that religious expression which 
she found not only a result of growth, but a means to 
growth. Back of this the constant intercession of 
parents and pastors at home could be reckoned on for 
certain young folks whose careers had been guided 
toward college in the hope that they would not be dis- 
obedient to the heavenly vision to which they had not 
before responded or had followed only haltingly. 

The last call of the whole college course was some 
service during Commencement Sunday, led, perhaps, 
by an alumnus, when some one who had been appar- 
ently uninfluenced by any manifestation of religious 
life or teaching during the past four or six or seven 
years would rise and say, **I could not leave this col- 
lege without testifying that I go out as a disciple of 
Jesus Christ." Then the professors forgot their 
heavy schedules and their scant salaries irregularly 
paid, and their remoteness from intellectual resources 
and the faintness of any hope of bettering these con- 
ditions, they forgot the tedious faculty meetings, and 
the indifference of undergraduates and the criticisms 
from within and without; they thanked God for one 
more student ready to live, and took courage for the 
next incoming generation. 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 113 

Commencement Day was the brightest jewel of 
Commencement Week, which crowned the year. Each 
member of the graduating class delivered an oration, 
and the valedictory and salutatory honor speakers 
could indulge in a few words of Latin to match the 
sonorous sentences of the president, as with dignity 
he placed his silk beaver hat upon his head, rose and 
bestowed the diplomas upon men in frock coats and 
girls in puffed and trained white muslin dresses, and 
wearing pink roses in their hair. Bunches of garden 
roses and bouquets of vari-colored flowers had greeted 
the close of each address, they came in showers from 
galleries and seats in the old chapel, but if in the new 
church were carried up by ushers and banked up the 
whole corner where the class received the congratula- 
tions of their friends. Then came Commencement 
dinner with toasts. Some one must represent the 
graduating class, but rarely a girl, although she might 
be intellectually gifted enough to have just produced 
the valedictory oration. But in the evening when the 
alumni (where now the class truly belonged) and fac- 
ulty and townspeople met at the president 's ' ' Levee, ' ' 
as this annual reception was called, the white muslins 
and pink roses were the center of attraction. Educa- 
tion was Coeducation. 

Each college was divided into halves, not by aca- 
demic standing, nor by sex, but by two rival camps 
known as literary societies. Subdivisions were by sex, 
for as the men were lined up into Philalatheans and 
Adelphians, so were the young women into Athenas 
and Hesperians. The Philalatheans and their sister 



lU FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WOBK 

Athenas collaborated not only in the college year, but 
during vacation skirmished to bring in the members 
equally coveted by the Hesperians and their brothers 
the Adelphians. The decorations of their halls, the 
solidity of their Friday night debates, even their par- 
ticipation in religious and general college issues, were 
conducted on the strictest partisan lines if society 
spirit was running high. 

The social life of the undergraduates centered 
around the receptions, sleighing parties and boat-rides 
of these societies more than around class matters. 
Other voluntary organizations such as the college 
newspaper board, the foreign missionary society, the 
oratorical society, the college chorus, lacked flavor in 
comparison. 

This same competitive spirit marked the intercol- 
legiate relations, which were in early days limited al- 
most entirely to the state oratorical contest, from 
which champions were sent to the inter-state contests, 
and the winning speakers and winning orations were 
never forgotten by a grateful constituency. But 
knowing each other, appreciating each other, co-opera- 
ting in anything at home or abroad — that was not 
dreamed of. Had it been dreamed of, would it have 
been desired? 

On the main line of the Chicago and Alton railroad, 
two miles north of Bloomington, the state of Illinois 
had established in 1857 the Illinois State Normal Uni- 
versity, and the village had taken the name of Normal. 
Here in 1872 the cultural features of education were 
fully recognized and the faculty were interested in 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 115 

graduating not simply teachers, but men and women 
with a working idealism that would stir them to take 
a hand wherever they might find themselves. It was 
a congenial soil in which a voluntary religious organ- 
ization of young women might spring up and flourish. 
Some of the student girls realized a need for a meet- 
ing for Bible study, Christian conversation and prayer 
where no restraint would be felt and which would not 
interfere with attendance at church services or Sun- 
day school. Three other students and two friends 
from one of the churches met with Lida Brown in her 
room, Sunday afternoon, November 12, and after all 
had prayed they talked over the possibility of a regu- 
lar meeting in a larger place where more would feel 
free to attend than might come to a private house. 
The committee appointed that afternoon reported dur- 
ing the week that the vestibule of the Congregational 
Church had been offered, and here they met regularly, 
with increase in both attendance and interest owing 
largely to revival meetings held in town under the 
preaching of Mr. Hammond the revivalist. To make 
these meetings permanent an organization seemed de- 
sirable and a committee brought in a constitution on 
January 19, 1873, in which they had hoped to be 
original, but at the last moment could produce nothing 
better than the borrowed constitution of the Young 
Men's Christian Association of the school. They 
styled themselves the Young Ladies' Christian As- 
sociation of Normal, Illinois, but in September, 1881, 
after a new constitution had been adopted in the 
spring, were satisfied to become merely Young Women, 



116 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Their officers were president, Ida E. Brown (Mrs. 
James Gary) ; vice president, Ida Witbeck (Mrs. 
Charles De Garmo) ; secretary, Emma V. Stewart 
(Mrs. I. E. Brown) ; treasurer, Lida A. Brown (Mrs. 
William P. McMurry). The secretary was very em- 
phatic as to their relation to the Men's Christian As- 
sociation and repeatedly explained, **This Young 
Women's Christian Association is not an offshoot of 
the Young Men's Christian Association. The only 
part they took in the formation of our Association was 
that of a goad. They wearied us by saying continu- 
ally: ^Why don't you form an Association similar 
to oursT This was after our prayer meeting had 
grown too large to be handled without some system 
and we were debating about what it was best to do. 
They also kindly lent us their constitution and by- 
laws, upon our application. With the organization 
of the prayer meeting they had nothing to do, not 
even the part of the importunate widow." 

Soon the attendance outgrew the vestibule and the 
body of the church was used for meetings, until it 
burned in the spring of 1873, when the basement of 
the Methodist church was placed at their disposal. 
These meetings were usually led by one of the mem- 
bers, each appointed by her predecessor, and upon 
such topics as The Love of God, Faith, Prayer, Praise, 
Christian Work, Christ, the Rock. All present were 
invited to speak. Both men and women led the eve- 
ning meetings, which they held with the Young Men's 
Christian Association. Soon these were held each 
Tuesday evening and a twenty minute noon prayer 




Ida a. Beowx Emma V. Stewart 

LiD\ A. Browx 
Jennie Leonard Hattie A. Lawsox 

Founders of the First Student Association 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 117 

meeting for girls met twice a week in the White Eoom 
of the University Building. In this same building 
the business meetings found a place in the recitation 
room of the preceptress or of one of the professors. 

The leadership of these services and the rotation 
in office occasioned by electing new officers and execu- 
tive committee each of the three terms of the school, 
with an extra committee for the vacation term, cer- 
tainly gave to all of the members a chance for de- 
velopment of their gifts. There were also several 
standing committees, and special committees from 
time to time, as for example, *'a committee consisting 
of two members from each of the churches was ap- 
pointed to confer with those who had recently become 
Christians, about joining some church." ''Each of 
the churches" meant Presbyterian, Baptist, Congre- 
gational, Methodist and Christian. Other special 
committees planned neighborhood work. 

The minutes were faithfully kept as may be seen 
from some of the entries. 

A Committee of three was elected to appoint one person 
in each row of seats (evidently in the Normal Assembly 
Hall) to speak with those sitting in that row and ask them 
to join our Association and to attend the meetings. 

The Association passed the following resolution, whereas 

Mr. D. C. Elliott had procured for the Y. L. C. A. free 
of expense a Record Book which is even better than they 
had expected to get for themselves, therefore 

Resolved, that this Association tender him sincere thanks 
for his kindness and that a copy of this Resolution be 
presented to him. 

A Committee was appointed to join with a similar com- 
mittee from the Young Men's Association in providing a 
literary entertainment for the Association. These commit- 



118 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

tees decided it would be better to hold a sociable, which 
was accordingly provided for by the two Associations with 
the assistance of some of the Normal residents in preparing 
supper for the evening. The music, toasts, speeches and 
supper passed off very pleasantly. (This was at the open- 
ing of the school year, 1875.) As the young ladies had 
been aiding the poor by soliciting such things as were 
thought necessary for them a motion was made and carried 
that such work should be made a part of the permanent 
work of the Y. L. C. A. 

Term after term the minutes show the evangelistic 
temper of the meetings. 

"At the close of the meeting a chance was given for those 
who wished to become Christians to manifest it by rising. 
Several availed themselves of the opportunity. An inquiry 
meeting was held at the close of the meeting." "An after 
meeting for young Christians was held in the parlor.'* 
"Two of our students asked for prayer for themselves." 
"Voted that a committee be appointed to see the pastors 
and working members of the different churches to see if 
they will not enter heartily into union with us and have 
meetings for the promotion of Christ's kingdom." "Our 
last Association of this term — The topic was, 'The Christian 
on his vacation.' An earnest appeal was made to the 
young people not to stop work after leaving Normal, but 
to form other Associations wherever they might go. An 
invitation was given for any to identify themselves with 
God's people. One young lady rose for prayers. In the 
after meeting several very earnest prayers were offered.'' 
"Five expressed their desire to become God's children." 

Further cooperation with the Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association was the work of supplying current 
periodicals for the students' reading table, furnish- 
ing reading material for the racks at the railroad sta- 
tion, posting bulletins of church and Association serv- 
ices and holding joint prayer meetings at the homes 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 119 

of members. They also attended state conventions as 
re^lar delegates from 1873 to 1881 and as correspond- 
ing members or visitors from 1882 to 1884, and made 
financial contributions. 

Young Men's Christian Association conferences 
held in Normal and Bloomington early in 1881 and 
again in 1884 had also brought the whole membership 
into touch with the broader Association field, its aims 
and policies. Mr. L. D. Wishard, student secretary 
of the International Committee of the Young Men's 
Christian Associations, addressed the girls, speaking of 
the Intercollegiate Movement and stating reasons for 
the Young Women's Christian Association's existence, 
independent of the Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion, congratulating the young women of Normal that 
their student Young Women's Christian Association 
was the first of its kind in the country. It was not 
until after these addresses that the position of corre- 
sponding secretary was created and the new officer 
was asked to correspond with as many other Associa- 
tions as possible. One of the first communications she 
read before the Association was a letter from Mrs. H. 
Thane Miller of Cincinnati, ** encouraging us in our 
efforts to do Christian work." The Normal Associa- 
tion, now in its second decade, was ready to meet that 
fall with its sister Associations in Illinois and the word 
Intercollegiate was to be translated into terms of 
young women's work. 

Four other student Young Women's Christian As- 
sociations are known to have come up spontaneously in 
the '70s and others in the early '80s before there was 



120 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

any outside suggestion toward organization. At 
Northwestern College, conducted by the Evangelical 
Association at Naperville, Illinois, an hour's ride west 
of Chicago, the preceptress, Miss Cunningham, met 
the young women students in her own room every week 
for an hour of religious worship and fellowship. 
Timid girls felt free to participate in this informal 
meeting and finally, with her cooperation on Novem- 
ber 4, 1875, ''they formed an organization for their 
own growth and the salvation of unsaved girls and the 
promotion of Christian work." This they called The 
Young Ladies' Christian Association until 1884, when 
they changed their name and became a part of the 
Illinois State Association. One who entered college 
as a freshman in 1880 found the letters Y. L. C. A. 
painted on the doors of the long narrow room which 
the faculty had given the Association, and which they 
used for prayer service and business meetings. It 
would have seemed a sacrilege to use it as a study room 
and it was too small for social purposes. 

The Association at Olivet College, Olivet, Michi- 
gan, dates from October 21, 1876. The constitution 
adopted that day stated their object; ''to promote the 
spiritual and social welfare of the young women of 
Olivet." One of the prime movers in this effort was 
Miss Mary Burnham, at that time principal of the Fe- 
male Department of the college. The first president 
was Minnie Cameron (Mrs. J. Y. Hartness), later 
president of the Lansing City Association. Rosamond 
Hunt (Gordon), Flora Lewis (Gallup) and Ella 
Starkweather were the other officers. They held meet- 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 121 

tings of their own within and outside the college, also 
combined with the college Young Men's Christian 
Association and the Women's Missionary Society of 
Olivet in other services. 

The State Normal School Association at Carbondale, 
Illinois, dates from the same year, as will be seen 
by the first entry in their minute book. 

Young Women's Christian Association 

Model Room S. I. N. U. 

Tuesday, Oct. 17, 1876. 

At the close of the Young Ladies' Prayer Meeting a 
proposition was made to change the prayer meeting 
into a Young Women's Christian Association, which met 
with general favor. The following oflBcers were elected for 
the first term: Miss M. Beech, President, Miss Debbie 
Decker, Secretary, Lliss Lizzie Sheppard, Treasurer. A com- 
mittee consisting of Misses Middleton, McAnally and Mason 
was appointed to form a constitution and by-laws to be 
presented at the next meeting. 

Then followed the names of twenty-four charter mem- 
bers. 

On October 30, 1877, the Lenox College Young 
Women's Christian Association at Hopkinton, Iowa, 
was formed after consultation with the officers of one 
of the Illinois Associations. The Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association of Lenox College, which had been 
organized the year before, was the first of its kind in 
Iowa and its constitution was the basis of that which 
the young women formed. 

Another interesting beginning was made at Doane 
College, Crete, Nebraska, in 1880 under the name of 
Young Ladies' Society of Co-workers. The band of 



122 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

girls held at first a daily noon prayer meeting of their 
own and had a Sunday afternoon prayer meeting with 
the Young Men 's Christian Association. This in time 
became the regular college prayer meeting, and the 
girls maintained their own service at the Sunday hour. 
They led in the Nebraska State Association, changing 
their name in 1883 to Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation. 

There were other college young women even more 
closely in touch with the Intercollegiate Student Move- 
ment, however, than these; they were the. women 
students in colleges where the words Young Men's 
Christian Association were construed to mean 
Students' Christian Association, and they were mem- 
bers in good and regular standing; they became of- 
ficers, committee members, leaders of meetings and 
regular delegates to state conventions. It would be 
more easy to detect this phenomenon were it not that 
in Young Men's Christian Association reports, initials 
of these persons' names were printed instead of the 
sex-betraying Christian names. The table of student 
Associations in the International Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association Year Book under the date of 1882- 
83, lists its officers in this manner: "Lawrence Uni- 
versity, Appleton, Wisconsin, president, A. Wilson; 
corresponding secretary, C. Althouse." It does not 
indicate that Miss Annis Wilson was a prize mathema- 
tician then in her sophomore year, and that Miss 
Carrie Althouse was the best soprano singer on the 
campus. 

Those two titles, Young Men's Christian As- 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 12S 

sociation and Students' Christian Association, had 
been in vogue since 1858. Mention has already 
been made of the great revival of 1857-58 and 
one noteworthy result in New York City, the for- 
mation of the Ladies' Christian Association. A most 
enlightening study might be made of the insti- 
tutions and organizations originating in revivals of re- 
ligion which brought to people who walked in dark- 
ness a great light, and gave them incentive and power 
to follow that light. During the revival in Ann 
Arbor, Michigan, that winter, there arose in the Uni- 
versity of Michigan a demand for a Christian organiza- 
tion of a more positive and stimulating type than the 
Union Missionary Society of Inquiry formed ten years 
before. A Students' Christian Association was begun 
in January, 1858. Women had not as yet been ad- 
mitted to the University, but on their arrival in 1870 
were identified fully with this Association. 

That same year, 1858, students at the University of 
Virginia had been attending a series of revival services 
held in the Baptist church of Charlottesville by the 
pastor, Dr. John A. Broadus. Some of these students 
had been conducting mission Sunday schools and they 
had been thinking of unifying all the voluntary re- 
ligious work of the university if possible. On October 
12, 1858, a Young Men's Christian Association was 
organized, adopting a constitution based upon copies 
of those of the Young Men's Christian Associations in 
London, England, and in Boston. So hearty a deter- 
mination did this new Association possess to become a 
part of the world movement that a clause was inserted 



124 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

granting membership privileges to members of other 
Young Men's Christian Associations while at the uni- 
versity, and almost immediately it entered the eon- 
federation of Young Men's Christian Associations in 
North America. Other student Young Men's Chris- 
tian Associations arose, some spontaneously, some en- 
couraged by Robert Weidensall, the first employed of- 
ficer of the International Committee. 

In 1877 the leaders at Princeton University, which 
had just changed its Philadelphian Society into a 
Young Men's Christian ^Association, invited students 
from other colleges to send representatives to the In- 
ternational Convention of the Young Men's Christian 
Associations at Louisville, Kentucky; twenty -five re- 
sponded from twenty-one colleges in eleven states. L. 
D. Wishard, who with William Earl Dodge, Jr., had 
been active in Princeton, was asked to become a visiting 
college secretary because of his familiarity with such 
work when previously an undergraduate in Hanover 
College, Indiana. Hanover was in a section where co- 
educational colleges prevailed and Mr. Wishard was 
perhaps prepared for the interpretation of the words 
* ' Young Men ' ' in the title of the Christian Association 
as he encountered it on the tours he made in the suc- 
ceeding years. 

When he visited Normal, Illinois, he saw the 
women's Association at work. That was really a 
young woman's movement for young women, capable 
of logical expansion, which could not be said of the 
other situation, for while the active presence of women 
students might be helpful in certain localities it could 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 125 

hardly carry weight throughout the whole United 
States, where in some sections coeducation was not 
even a debatable question, as it had been decided in the 
negative without debate. 

There was at this time no national organization of 
Young Women's Christian Associations. Delegates 
from Women's Christian Associations and Young 
Women 's Christian Associations had met at Hartford, 
Connecticut, in 1871 in a conference which had oc- 
curred biennially for the ten years since. At two of 
these conferences a member of the International Com- 
mittee of the Young Men 's Christian Associations, Mr. 
H. Thane IVIiller of Cincinnati, had taken part in the 
program. Mr. Miller's bride, formerly principal of 
Mt. Auburn Young Ladies' Seminary, was also corre- 
sponding secretary of the Women 's Christian Associa- 
tion of Cincinnati. With these friends, it is said, 
Mr. Wishard discussed the problem of the withdrawal 
of the young women from the student Young Men's 
Christian Association without disturbing the local 
Christian work. Mrs. Miller consented to bring before 
the Conference of the Women's Christian Association 
(which had now become International), on October 
12-15, 1881, at St. Louis, the question of establishing 
relations with Young Women's Christian Associations 
in colleges and seminaries. After Mrs. Miller had re- 
ported from the Young Ladies' Christian Association 
of Mt. Auburn Institute and stated that the object of 
the organization was the development of Christian life 
in the members and those over whom they have in- 
fluence, Mrs. John McDougal, president of the Associa- 



126 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

tion in Montreal, Canada, stated that she had received 
a commnnieation from the Christian Women's Educa- 
tion Union of Scotland requesting that the young 
women of America be asked to affiliate with them in 
Christian work in schools. The conference felt that 
the importance of the work represented by Mrs. Miller 
could not be over-rated and asked her and Mrs. Lam- 
son of Boston to act as a committee to see what could 
be done and report at their earliest convenience. The 
next day Mrs. Miller reported from the Committee 
upon Work Among School Girls as follows: 

Believing that great good can be accomplished by the 
organization of Christian Associations in connection with 
the young ladies' colleges and seminaries of our country, 
and that thereby the members of such schools will become 
familiar with and trained in the methods of the Women's 
Christian Association of our land, therefore 

Resolved: that a committee of three or five be appointed 
by this Conference whose duty it shall be, by correspondence 
and other methods, to encourage the formation of such or- 
ganizations in young ladies' schools and colleges, and se- 
cure from them, as far as possible, a representation in 
our future conferences. 

The resolution was adopted and Mrs. Miller as 
chairman of the committee collaborated with Mr. 
Wishard. His duties took him among the coeduca- 
tional colleges and into the student conferences where 
women were present. A circular signed by Mrs. Miller 
and entitled ^' Young Women's Christian Associations 
in American Colleges and Seminaries" was sent out 
widely. This narrated the action of the St. Louis 
Conference, omitting the phrases limiting its scope 
to women's institutions, since Mr. Wishard 's problem 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 127 

was in coeducational colleges, and stated the objects to 
be gained by separate organization, and special ad- 
vantages as well. 

There are special advantages to be desired from the 
formation of these Associations in co-educational institu- 
tions. 

First. Young women will naturally feel an increased 
sense of responsibility in the work of an organization bear- 
ing their own name. 

Second. The existence of two Christian Associations in 
a co-educational institution will secure that healthful, 
stimulating competition which greatly promotes activity. 

Third. Many young women will feel more free to speak 
and act in meetings of their own than in those in which 
young men are present. 

Fourth. The organization in co-educational institutions 
of a special Association for young women by doubling the 
number of officers and committees, will double the number 
upon whom rests special responsibility. 

In schools and colleges exclusively for young women the 
proposed organization will not in any way interfere with 
existing societies or methods, but by bringing these societies 
into relations with those of other institutions will lend in- 
creased efficiency to their present methods of work and each 
society will become a means of help and inspiration to 
every one. 

The circular announced that a constitution espe- 
cially adapted to the purposes of the Association could 
be obtained upon application. 

This model constitution in its '83 and '84 editions 
stood for constitution, by-laws and departmental poli- 
cies all in one, as citations will show. 

"The object of this Association shall be the development 
of Christian character in its members and the prosecution 
of active Christian work, particularly among the young 
women of the institution." "The active membership of the 



128 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Association shall consist of lady students and teachers of 
this institution who are connected with an evangelical 
church and have been elected by a majority vote of the 
members present at any meeting. Only active members 
shall have the right to vote and hold office." 

"Any lady student or teacher in the institution may be 
elected an associate member by a majority vote of the 
members present at any meeting." "The corresponding secre- 
tary shall be chosen from the incoming Junior class. She 
shall conduct the correspondence of the Association." "Un- 
less otherwise ordered, all standing committees shall con- 
sist of one from each class. They shall report to the As- 
sociation at each regular business meeting." "The Associa- 
tion shall hold a Social Reception for new students at some 
time during the first two weeks of the college year, for the 
purpose of impressing them with the advantages to be 
derived from their union with it." 

At both the International Convention of the Young 
Men's Christian Associations held in Milwaukee in 
May, 1883, and the International Conference of the 
Women's Christian Association held in Boston in 
October of the same year, Mrs. Miller was present and 
reported sending out the circulars. Mr. Wishard kept 
up extensive visitations and in many places, as at Ot- 
terbein University, Westerville, Ohio, he helped form, 
from a Young Ladies ' Prayer Meeting which had been 
kept up man}^ years, a parallel Association to that of 
the young men's organization he was officially as- 
sisting. 

The Young W^omen's Christian Association of 
Merom Christian College (1883) seems to have been 
the first started in Indiana. Others that year were 
Illinois Wesleyan at Bloomington, Illinois; Parsons 
College, Iowa Wesleyan, and Cornell Colleges in Iowa ; 
Albion, Hillsdale and Kalamazoo Colleges in Michi- 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 129 

gan, and Wooster University, Ohio. The year 1884 
saw a great reinforcement: the state universities of 
Wisconsin, Illinois and Nebraska and many denomina- 
tional colleges, among them Knox College at Gales- 
burg, Illinois ; DePauw University at Greencastle, In- 
diana, Coe College at Cedar Rapids, Iowa College at 
Grinnell and Penn College at Oskaloosa, Iowa ; Wash- 
burn College at Topeka, Kansas; Carleton College, 
Northfield, Minnesota; Lawrence University in Wis- 
consin. The first student Association of the south, at 
Greenville and Tusculum College, Tennessee, also 
dates from 1884. 

As these were coeducational institutions one is not 
surprised to find that the young men as well as the 
young women and many of the faculty of both sexes 
discussed the proposed ''special advantages'' pro and 
con. Little was to be gained locally from segregation, 
some thought, and they were not sure what might be 
gained in wider relations. Mr. Wishard's visits were 
the most tangible evidence of any general body inter- 
ested in Young Women's Christian Associations, and 
he represented then and previously the Young Men's 
Christian Associations, which he was magnanimously 
advising the women to leave for their own good. He 
did not publish the fact that his committee, not Mrs. 
Miller's, had printed the constitutions and circulars 
which he told them to secure from her in Cincinnati. 

But back of all questions of administration it must 
be remembered that for a strong appeal to the un- 
converted the young women had looked to the state 
secretaries of the Young Men's Christian Association, 



130 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

who in their rounds through their territory were ac- 
customed to hold evangelistic services in the college 
chapel for all students, or in the churches for college 
and town communities together. For their Bible 
study courses they looked to the office of ' ' The Watch- 
man/' the Young Men's Christian Association organ 
of that day, in which ^'Leaves from a Worker's Note 
Book ' ' and other popular texts were issued. For their 
intercollegiate fellowship they depended upon the 
Young Men's Christian Association conferences, state 
and district, which might be within reach, and in the ar- 
rangements for which they had been officially remem- 
bered. After state Associations were formed these con- 
ferences were sometimes really joint meetings called by 
the state committees. The men delegates were college 
faculty and undergraduates, not the general member- 
ship from city and railroad Associations. Speakers of 
international reputation made addresses, students made 
reports, and Young Men's Christian Association sec- 
retaries led discussion upon topics like the following: 
''The Opportunities in College Life for Making Re- 
ligious Impressions upon Young Men; How Is the Y. 
M. C. A. Improving Them?" ''The Adaptability of 
the Y. W. C. A. to College Girls ; What It Is Doing and 
Can Do." "The Promotion of the Missionary Spirit 
in College. " " The Bible Training Class. " " Intercol- 
legiate Relations." "Claims of the General Secre- 
taryship upon College Graduates." "Individual 
Work, Its Importance and Blessedness." "The Two- 
fold Purpose of Association Work — Saving Men and 
Qualifying them to Save Others. ' ' 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 131 

On Sunday there were separate consecration meet- 
ings in the morning, and gospel meetings in the after- 
noon, with a great rally at night for state and national 
presentation. Certain hours on Friday and Saturday 
were taken by the young women for their own busi- 
ness meetings, when the alumnae, who had been As- 
sociation leaders in their undergraduate days, unified 
this yearns meeting with its predecessors and the state 
executive committee was elected for the next year. 

This sort of training made the conduct of a state 
convention of young women alone no matter for alarm 
or distrust. Even in the sections where the young 
women assembled for their first state gathering at a 
separate time and place apart from the men, some of 
their prominent women workers had attended these 
coeducational conferences and knew how to build the 
program, and some of the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation leaders would come to speak, to lead the 
finance meeting and to advise on the general policies 
in case they should be asked to do so. Perhaps there 
was an undercurrent of conviction on their part that 
such effort was well expended and that whatever 
strengthened the women's Christian organization in 
any college would also further the interests of the 
men. Some of these Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion secretaries had daughters of their own among the 
undergraduates and counted the girls' convention a 
good day's work in their year. 

Over the signature of Bell Bevier of Wooster Uni- 
versity, as chairman, the Ohio State Executive Com- 
mittee sent greetings to the young women in colleges 



132 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

and seminaries in Ohio telling of the organization of a 
State Association during the winter of 1884 (February 
14-17) and calling a convention of their own at West- 
erville, the next February. The circular said, ''Per- 
haps never again in our lives will our field of labor 
be either so large or so personal as during the days of 
our college life. The desirability of some organized 
method of work that can be adopted by the educated 
Christian young women of our country is evident, and 
what more pleasant bond of union could be found.'' 
Michigan had formed the first State Association at Al- 
bion, also in February, 1884 (convention held 7-11), 
and Iowa, at a convention in Cedar Kapids attended 
by fifty delegates from college and one country Young 
Women's Christian Association, formed the third 
State Association on November 15 of that year. 
Their far-reaching Iowa spirit was shown by their 
response to an appeal of one of their number with a 
subscription of one hundred and five dollars for ''an 
International College Secretary, a young woman," 
who, they confidently expected, would be secured dur- 
ing the coming year. Their constitution did not con- 
fine the organization to student Associations ; a group 
anywhere was eligible. Remember that the Y^oung 
People's Society of Christian Endeavor had been 
known less than four years and had not found its 
w^ay in any appreciable degree into the Mississippi 
Valley. At joint conventions in January of 1885, at 
Whitewater, Wisconsin, and at Bloomington, Illinois, 
the third and fourth State Associations were effected. 
In April at Greencastle, Indiana, and in December at 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 1S3 

St. Paul, Minnesota, the sixth and seventh State As- 
sociations were formed; Kansas and Nebraska fol- 
lowed in 1886. 

In all these states, an Executive Committee was 
elected, representing in its membership each local unit. 
The main officer was the president, some capable un- 
dergraduate, who was then at liberty to select one 
of her friends as secretary, upon whom the duties of 
the treasurer also fell, for both state and local financ- 
ing were simple almost to the point of being negli- 
gible. By the fall of 1887 prominent alumnae were 
being called as state secretaries. Ida Schell entered 
upon her duties at the close of the Iowa Convention 
in October, and though she was teaching at the same 
time, managed to report by the fall of 1888 that she 
had made twenty-three Association visits, occupying 
thirty-four days and traveling 2,581 miles. For this 
and other work throughout the year, chiefly corre- 
spondence, she received an honorarium of one hundred 
dollars and about as much for traveling expenses. 
Nellie Knox, who assumed a similar position in Ohio 
in December, 1887, had by April visited twenty-seven 
points and traveled over a thousand miles. Kansas 
claims the record for full time employment of a secre- 
tary ; Mrs. L. P. Bradford of the committee served for 
April and May, 1888, and Jennie Sherman from June 
on. Illinois was only a few days behind, for Eula 
Bates commenced work that same April. 

Never were four young women more unlike: Miss 
Knox, quiet, forceful, with a clear vision of the possi- 
bilities in the Association; Miss Schell, substantial, 



1S4, FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

unselfish, a natural bearer of other people's burdens; 
Miss Sherman, keen, alert, giving God the credit for 
the seeming miracles that constantly resulted; Miss 
Bates, gentle, gracious, instinctively making the right 
approach. All were guided by the Spirit of God to 
whom they looked for guidance in this untried path. 
None stayed on to watch her work past the pioneer 
stage, for one married, one studied medicine, one took 
a missionary appointment in India and another in 
Turkey under her church board. None broke down 
from nervous prostration, although the travel was as 
exacting, the correspondence as taxing, the strain in 
interviews and meetings as great as in any subsequent 
era. Three years later (1891) all but two of the thir- 
teen organized states had the full or part time of a 
secretary. This advance meant, of course, a larger 
State Committee at a permanent headquarters, a regu- 
lar treasury, and sub-committees to care for groups of 
Associations and the various headquarters duties such 
as planning the secretary's schedule, arranging for 
conventions and issuing publications. 

Now that the intercollegiate idea was expressed 
through joining like Associations of college women in 
the State Association, the dependence upon the Young 
Men's Christian Association was discontinued, as other 
means became accessible. The young women helped 
each other and themselves; the results were proving 
their claim most often made, that the Young Women 's 
Christian Association had as its distinct object *'the 
development of Christian character and the prosecu- 
tion of active Christian work among young women." 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 135 

For spiritual appeal to the uninterested girls they 
had now the visits of their own state secretary, of their 
own national secretary and of rare Bible teachers like 
Naomi Knight, who made tours among the Associa- 
tions. For their Bible study courses and meeting 
topics of the Young Women's Christian Associations, 
the national committee (see chapter XIV) was making 
some provision through The Quarterly and The 
Evangel, although the International Committee of the 
Young Men's Christian Associations kept ahead for 
many years. For ideas on conducting Association 
work and for spiritual vigor which the workers craved, 
they had their own state and national conventions, be- 
sides their secretaries' visits, and after 1891 their own 
summer conferences. 

Two styles of railroad connections were afforded to 
the towns where a large percentage of the first college 
Associations were to be found. One was the branch 
railroad, upon which two trains ran daily each way 
to and from a larger railroad center several hours 
distant. The other was the main line where local 
traffic was accommodated — inaccurate use of the word ! 
— ^upon the through trains which were scheduled for 
convenience of passengers arriving at Chicago or 
Pittsburgh or Buffalo, or St. Paul or Omaha or Kansas 
City, not that of pilgrims to the academic groves 
which the student secretary was seeking. Street rail- 
ways were found in few college towns; unseaworthy 
hackney carriages and very commercial omnibuses 
were used for depot service at charges that would 
have seemed too cheap had they not matched the 



136 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

vehicles so exactly. In order to avoid short night 
journeys and yet not to be en route at the afternoon 
and evening hours when the students were most at 
liberty to meet with her, the secretary was repeatedly 
taking local trains due to depart at seven o'clock in 
the morning, or boarding through trains due to pass 
through towns at four o'clock, but frequently belated. 
Dormitory breakfast hours at 6 :30 or 7 :00 o 'clock 
sometimes fitted in to this schedule, sometimes not. 
There were no lunch counters at the stations, no dining 
cars on the trains as a rule, but even if there had 
been, the state treasury could hardly have afforded 
to pay for the seventy-five cent and dollar table d'hote 
meals then obtainable. There was for some years no 
state office, and even when the state officers were will- 
ing to help they were often busy teachers and under- 
graduates, who had really less time for Association 
correspondence than had the state secretary. 

When the difficulties arising from newness of the 
position and the secretary's natural diffidence at 
venturing forth unpiloted upon uncharted seas have 
been mentioned, all the disadvantages have been swept 
away and there can be fully acknowledged some of the 
many pleasures and satisfactions of those visits to the 
early student Associations. First, the welcome ; dele- 
gates to the preceding conventions had helped raise 
and give the money to put a secretary into the field, 
they believed in the office, and wanted the officer to 
spend as long a time in their college as she could. 
Sometimes she stayed a week, rarely speaking in chapel 
or leading the college prayer meeting, but holding 



ORIGIN OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 137 

daily meetings with the girls, talking with those who 
called at the dormitory guest chamber about their 
own Christian lives, teaching them to pray for them- 
selves as they surrendered themselves into Jesus 
Christ 'b keeping. She talked with the president about 
**how to get the girls to work on committees,*' and 
with the treasurer en ''how to get the girls to pay 
their dues," and with the chairman of the devotional 
committee about "what kind of topics to have," but 
there was no drawing up of policies for each com- 
mittee. Often she gave a Bible reading and once at 
least spoke about the state work, but her main business 
was to bring the leaders of the Association and the 
professed Christian workers into the fulness of 
spiritual light and power which she knew from expe- 
rience could come only from claiming the outpouring 
of the Holy Spirit, and to encourage the others whom 
she might meet to rouse their wills to lay hold on Jesus 
Christ for salvation. The secretary tried to represent 
in herself what the Young Women's Christian Associ- 
ation fully meant. One of them once alluded to her 
first contact with the movement in this way: ''We 
were awakened to a new and vigorous type of personal 
service in an every day working religion that sought 
to make every day a day of opportunity." The un- 
dergraduates believed that their secretaries were able 
to make good use of opportunities and sometimes when 
bidding one good-by at the railroad station would in- 
troduce her to a fellow passenger who had not come 
under the influence of the last few days. 




CHAPTER XI 

THE INTENSIVE GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 

APID expansion was seen from 1886 on, ex- 
pansion into new territory, the East, the 
Pacific Coast, the South; into new types of 
institutions, such as women 's colleges ; into more state 
universities and normal schools and independent sec- 
ondary schools. The centers least affected were those 
where a desire for aggressive evangelical women's or- 
ganizations had not crystallized, and those where the 
lady principal felt herself so responsible for the 
spiritual culture of the young women under her charge 
that she dared not divide this responsibility with a 
student society of any kind. Every new Association 
called something forth from the others and added 
something to them. Good ideas were not copyrighted 
and few knew the origin of those most eagerly seized 
upon. Each successive edition of the model constitu- 
tion incorporated as standing policies what had been 
independent experiments a little while before. 

A natural goal for the membership committee had 
been * ' every young woman in college. ' ' Faculty mem- 
bers and former members in town were eligible, so that 
occasionally the total membership exceeded the num- 
ber of young women registered. More often, however, 

138 



GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 139 

the membersliip consisted of as many of the girls in 
the residence halls, and from those families which had 
come to town for the sake of the college, as could be 
secured as members the first term of their college life. 
Daughters of families with strong local affiliations and 
of those residing far distant from the university cen- 
ter, members of the schools of music, expression, etc., 
when not resident in the dormitories might or might 
not identify themselves with the Association. 

Then a new conception was evolved; a Reception 
Committee was constituted to have charge of the 
special efforts to reach the new students at the begin- 
ning of the year, and also throughout the year plan 
a social life for the Association which should unite all 
young women in the institution in a Christian sister- 
hood. The social program at first had been brief but 
striking in its innovations upon that most conservative 
element, college tradition. 

For decades the first general social occasion in many 
colleges had been the formal receptions tendered by 
the rival literary societies in alternating years or as 
close together as the faculty would allow. The new 
students were expected to attend without fail, were 
judiciously escorted, lavishly entertained, and ful- 
somely impressed with the master idea of the evening, 
namely, that a college career would be unendurable 
unless the student were at once proposed for the en- 
tertaining society. When the first delegates reported 
from some convention that in some colleges the Chris- 
tian Associations had been given right of way in 
social matters at the beginning of the year some of 



140 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

the Association leaders faced a painful dilemma. If 
they fell into line, the literary society of the opposi- 
tion might get more members than their own, whose 
turn it was to entertain. If they did not fall into 
line, they would be justly despised by the colleges 
which had already made the sacrifice. They usually 
solved the difficulty by holding the Association re- 
ception the first week and offering even more sumptu- 
ous entertainments by the literary societies after- 
wards. Then the informal receptions for the girls 
alone found place here. 

Another innovation was the Student Handbook, 
sent out to intending students with a letter of welcome 
through the long vacation or given out at the regis- 
trar's office. These pocket manuals were usually 
issued with the Young Men's Christian Association 
and gave the current and historical information about 
the college, the Associations, and the community, 
which new students were sure to need. 

Leadership of the religious meetings grew to be 
more formal than the occasional custom of assigning 
each member in alphabetical order had made possible. 
Topics were more carefully selected, and topic cards 
were presented in advance, following out a general 
scheme by which gospel meetings, missionary meetings, 
opportunities for presentation of religious movements, 
each had a place. Instead of one noon prayer meeting 
in an administrative or recitation building, small 
prayer circles met in the residence halls at an evening 
hour. The early period of private prayer. The Morn- 
ing Watch, was becoming known as "the secret of a 



GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 141 

strong Christian life for a busy student/' and officers 
and committee chairmen often met weekly in prayer 
together even when there was no regular cabinet meet- 
ing. For any series of evangelistic meetings pro- 
jected by college authorities or by the Association as 
such, there was careful organization of invitation giv- 
ing and of personal interviews, so that each woman 
student not known to be a Christian might find help 
through these meetings. When attendance at chapel 
and church was voluntary the Association members 
supported these loyally, as they did the class prayer 
meetings, separate missionary meetings, or other gen- 
eral religious gatherings not under the Association 
auspices. 

The growth in Bible study was tremendously quick- 
ened through summer conference delegates, who often 
declared they did not know before that the Bible was 
written for thinking people and were charmed to find 
that a book that had met the old, old needs of centuries 
of human lives had anything to say to nineteenth cen- 
tury undergraduates. The distinction made between 
a general Bible class and a workers ' training class has 
already been noted. There has been no time when a 
student Young Women's Christian Association could 
fulfill its obligation unless there were several young 
women concerned with relating the lives of individual 
students to their Lord and Master Jesus Christ. But 
even the best methods became trite and meaningless 
when followed in the letter and not in the spirit. For 
this reason the valuable early texts fell into disuse, 
but the work of personal evangelism which these were 



142 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

designed to further, has again in these later years come 
to the front, as the real meanings of membership are 
better construed and the obligations of leadership are 
being assumed, not with a note of interrogation, but 
with affirmation of the supremacy of the spirit. 

Missionary interests have been almost from the first 
closely connected with the Student Volunteer Move- 
ment for Foreign Missions, which dated from the sum- 
mer of 1886, the same season in which the State Com- 
mittees formed the National Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association (see chapter XIV). 

So dear a prerogative is the sending and receiving of 
greetings at all conventions, that one does not always 
pay too strict attention to what the content of such 
messages may be. That could not have been the case, 
however, with the following communication. 

Mt. Hermon, Mass., July 31, 1886. 
To the Representatives of the Young Women's Christian 
Association at Geneva, Wisconsin: 

The two hundred and eighty college students representing 
ninety-eight College Young Men's Christian Associations, 
now in session in their school for Bible Study at Mt. Her- 
mon, Mass., send Christian greeting to th.e Young Women's 
Christian Associations of the United States about to con- 
vene at Geneva, Wisconsin, with a view to forming a Na- 
tional organization. 

We rejoice to hear of your Convention and its purposes 
because we believe that God is waiting to show that as He 
has blest the exclusive Evangelical work of young men for 
young men so will He also set His seal of approval upon 
the work of young women for young women. We con- 
gratulate you, first, because your meeting will be a notable 
event in the history of the special Christian work of the 
age. 

Secondly, we congratulate you upon the tact, energy, and 



GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 143 

devotion shown in your arrangements for the proposed con- 
vention and in the plans which you purpose in it to carry 
out. 

Thirdly, we congratulate you also upon the opportunity 
you are about to have for receiving the outpouring of God's 
blessing in a like way to that we have enjoyed. 

And we invoke upon you and your deliberations at Geneva, 
and upon the great work you there may plan and organize, 
the blessing of our Heavenly Father. 
By the Committee: 

Howard H. Russell, Oberlin College, Chairman 

A. M. Cunningham, Illinois State Normal 

S. C. Bartlett, Jr., Dartmouth College 

P. B. Guernsey, Madison University 

O. A. Lewis, Carleton College 

E. H. Rawlings, Randolph Macon College 

E. C. Whitney, Amherst College 

John McDougall, McGill University 

J. R. MoTT, Cornell University 

This was the historic month of July when at the 
invitation of Mr. D. L. Moody, men had assembled 
from universities and colleges in all parts of the United 
States and Canada to study the Bible in this place 
apart. This first student summer conference was also 
the birthplace of the Student Volunteer Movement. 
It is said that ten days of the conference had gone by 
before the subject of missions was even mentioned in 
the Conference, but some had come with the conviction 
that out from that large gathering God would call 
some to consecrate themselves as foreign missionaries. 
One of this number was Eobert P. Wilder of Prince- 
ton. He, his sister Grace Wilder, and others of that 
missionary family had prayed unceasingly for workers 
not only for India, their home land, but for all other 
sections of the unevangelized world. When the invi- 



144 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

tation was given at Mt. Hermon to those thinking 
seriously of foreign service, twenty-one came together. 
They began to pray that the Lord of the harvest would 
separate many of these delegates to the great work. 
Then the answer began to come. After two weeks of 
thinking and praying there occurred the "Meeting of 
the Ten Nations, ' ' where sons of missionaries in China, 
India and Persia, and young men of America, Japan, 
Siam, Germany, Denmark and Norway, and an Ameri- 
can Indian, each told in a three minute address that 
his country needed more workers from that very group 
of students and ended by repeating "God is love'' in 
the language of the country he represented. The num- 
ber of intending missionaries increased from twenty- 
one to nearly fifty. It is said that missions became 
the topic of all conversation, everywhere. Each 
volunteer approached others and one by one men came 
in to announce that they had won the victory over 
self which set them free to follow Christ's command. 
When the farewell meeting of the Conference as- 
sembled there were ninety-nine enrolled; when it 
closed one more had announced his decision and an 
even one hundred college men stood as volunteers for 
the foreign mission field. 

The Cambridge Band and its tours of the British 
Universities was then in people's minds. They re- 
called the dynamic impression made by these seven 
conspicuous leaders in Cambridge University life as 
they presented the claim of the unevangelized world to 
other undergraduates and led the way out to China. 
Many had been stirred that very winter by J. E. K. 



GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 145 

Studd's account of it while he was visiting American 
universities. The volunteers at Mt. Hermon approved 
such a scheme of deputations and selected four men 
to visit throughout the country, laying before other 
students the reasons which had led them to offer their 
lives. That year Mr. Wilder and Mr. John N. For- 
man visited one hundred and seventy-six colleges and 
divinity schools in the United States and Canada, 
going two by two for the most part, rallying students 
around the idea of the evangelizing of the world in 
this generation ; an idea which seemed as visionary in 
1886 as it seemed justified in 1913. Like a revelation 
of the apostles of the primitive church seemed the visit 
of these two men of prayer to many of the institutions 
when they came. Like a miracle seemed the response. 
Twenty-one hundred students volunteered that year; 
five hundred of these were from the student Young 
Women's Christian Associations. The percentage 
was even higher in some later seasons. Robert E. 
Speer, Lucy Guinness, Clarissa H. Spencer and Hor- 
ace Tracy Pitkin were among the later traveling secre- 
taries. 

How to make the movement permanent seemed to be 
answered in 1888 hy appointing an Executive Com- 
mittee of one each from the International Committees 
of the Young AVomen's Christian Association and 
Young Men 's Christian Association and a third person 
to represent the Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance. 
Mr. John R. Mott, the first chairman, has continued 
in office ever since. The great Student Volunteer 
Movement conventions, occurring once in a student 



146 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

generation, the mission study texts, dating from the 
course on Missions in the Apostolic Church published 
in ^'TKe Student Volunteer'^ in 1893, the missionary 
institutes at the summer conferences, the instigation 
to missionary reading and giving on the part of the 
whole student body, are only means to the end of con- 
vincing students of their opportunity and obligation 
in answering the world challenge for the spread of a 
world Christianity. 

Wherever a college had undertaken, before the As- 
sociation was organized, the support of a missionary 
or foreign student or school or other special work 
under the church board with which the college was 
affiliated, as was many times the case, the missionary 
department assumed that obligation before con- 
tributing missionary gifts through other channels. 
After 1894, when the state secretary of Iowa was called 
to become general secretary of the "World's Young 
Women's Christian Association, and an alumna of the 
University of Illinois sailed as the first American sec- 
retary to India, there was lively interest in these two 
new avenues for missionary giving. Students who 
were in college January 20, 1895, will remember the 
dime banks which were sent out by Miss R. F. Morse, 
the American member of the World's Committee re- 
sponsible for raising funds in this country, and the re- 
quest to hold on that day an Oriental tea, or in some 
other way to present the interest of foreign Young 
Women's Christian Association work and collect fifty 
dimes for the world's treasury. 

Intercollegiate relations were most evident at the 



GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 147 

time when delegations were being made up for tlie 
state and national conventions and for the summer 
conferences, which began as a Summer Bible and 
Training School in 1891. These developed more for 
volunteers than for employed officers and by 1902 had 
begun a still further specialization, one conference for 
students only. But the widest reach of intercollegiate 
fellowship was the inclusion of the Student Young 
Women's Christian Associations in the World's 
Student Christian Federation, which was formed in 
1895 in the following way : In 1887 Professor Henry 
Drummond of Edinburgh University visited the 
Northfield Men's Conference; in 1888 a delegation of 
twelve students came from the Universities of Oxford, 
Cambridge and Utrecht. James Bronson Reynolds 
of Yale made several tours among continental and 
Levantine universities in 1889 to 1892, concentrating 
his attention on the student situation in Paris. John 
R. Mott spent the spring months of 1894 in the British 
colleges and attended the Keswick student conference 
when the British College Christian Union was formed. 
Mr. Wishard had lately returned from his world trip 
in which student Associations had been developed in 
mission lands. 

Prince Bernadotte of Sweden invited student leaders 
to Vadstena Castle in the summer of 1895 and two 
hundred accepted. Delegates came from the United 
States and Canada, representing the Intercollegiate 
department of the Young Men's Christian Associations 
of North America, through which the student organ- 
izations affiliated with the International Committee of 



148 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Young Women's Christian Associations were given 
membership; from the British College Christian 
Union, representing both men and women students in 
Great Britain and Ireland; from the German Chris- 
tian Students' Alliance; and from universities in Den- 
mark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, about to unite in 
the Scandinavian Student Movement. The widely 
scattered student Associations in non- Christian coun- 
tries were counted as a fifth Movement, represented by 
Mr. Wishard as the foreign work secretary. Dr. Karl 
Fries of Sweden was elected chairman and John R. 
Mott general secretary. For twenty years they have 
stood by the task the Federation assumed that day : 

1. To unite student Christian movements or organizations 

throughout the world, and to promote mutual relations 
among them. 

2. To collect information about the religious condition of 

the students of all lands. 

3. To lead students to become disciples of Jesus Christ as 

their only Saviour and God. 

4. To deepen the spiritual life of students. 

5. To enlist students in the work of extending the King- 

dom of Christ throughout this world. 

Ten years later at the Zeist, Holland, Conference, 
a women's department of this Federation was created 
and two of the most remarkable women of this gener- 
ation were appointed to leadership which rallied 
women students of all types and faculties. Professor 
Lilavati Singh of Lucknow College, India, was made 
vice-chairman. She had been introduced at the 
Ecumenical Missionary Conference of 1900 in New 
York City as a young woman who had read Green's 




Miss Ruth Rouse, 
When Representing the Student Volunteer Movement 



GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 149 

History of the English People through seven times in 
her eagerness to acquire the English language. It 
was after hearing Miss Singh's address on the Re- 
sults of Higher Education, of which she was herself 
an exponent, that Ex-President Benjamin Harrison 
said, * ' If I had given a million dollars to foreign mis- 
sions, I should count it wisely invested if it led only 
to the conversion of that one woman.'' The western 
world had little time to see the results of Miss Singh 's 
influence upon the woman's movement, for her death 
in 1909 cut short that career which would have been 
a revelation to people unappreciative of Oriental in- 
tellect and little acquainted with the history of 
woman's education in India. Miss Ruth Rouse of 
Girton College, Cambridge, the general secretary, is 
well known in America, which she first visited in 1897 
as a representative of the Student Volunteer Move- 
ment before taking up residence in Bombay in the 
Missionary Settlement of University Women. Then 
the International Committee of Young Women's 
Christian Associations prevailed on her to postpone 
her plans still another year, and she returned to this 
country for special student work during the next 
academic year. It was during this stay that she and 
Miss Grace H. Dodge talked together at the time of 
the New York metropolitan conference about what 
Christian life in educational centers in other lands 
might be if the student Associations of America would 
rise to their opportunities, look far afield as well as 
upon their own campuses and take a share worthy of 
the name among the women students of the world. 



150 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

From this interview resulted the more adequate place 
which American women students have since assumed 
in foreign student affairs. 

It will be remembered that the first organization 
called itself the Young Ladies' Christian Association 
of Normal, not of the Illinois State Normal University. 
Every Association since has felt some call to outside 
activities, both for the natural expression of an un- 
selfish Christian life, and because many communities 
have offered appealing fields for the service which 
could be rendered by college women, endowed as mis- 
sionaries, speakers, Bible teachers, sympathetic visit- 
ors, or organizers of groups for entertainment or study. 
Mission Sunday schools have been a favorite commu- 
nity enterprise and from these have resulted churches 
or Young Women's Christian Associations or other 
permanent institutions. From this training many a 
girl has gone out from University or normal school, 
into some isolated town or village so untouched by 
any organized church that this young teacher has 
called a Sunday school into being, recruited teachers, 
herself acted as superintendent, and changed the whole 
face of affairs. When student Associations are near 
cities this outside work committee has had literally 
no end to its opportunities, and when it has been near 
the open country its response has meant even more 
self sacrifice on the part of the members, who have 
made their way along the snowy roads on their Sun- 
day and week-day appointments of winter after win- 
ter. 

Nothing but preoccupation in the subject of the 



GROWTH OF STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 151 

meeting, or an enthusiasm which was blind to all 
physical objects, could have made endurable some of 
the rooms in which the early student Associations 
held their meetings. These were chiefly college reci- 
tation rooms where settees and the professors' desk 
were the only furniture, and where the blackboards, 
covered with geometrical demonstrations with and 
without the subscription Q. E. D., or corrected French 
prose sentences, were the only mural decorations. In 
1890 only twenty-three Associations reported rooms 
and only a part of these were large enough for the 
purposes of an assembly room. In 1900 there were 
one hundred and forty-nine, many of them dignified 
and attractive. Although the subject of a building 
for Association headquarters at the University of 
Iowa had been broached for some time and pledges 
had been made to secure one, yet Brinton Hall in 
Philadelphia was given to the Woman's Medical Col- 
lege of Pennsylvania Association in 1888; the Iowa 
building. Close Hall, was dedicated in November, 
1891; and the next year Stiles Hall was erected for 
the Association at the University of California. These 
were both administration buildings for both men's 
and women's Associations. The Otterbein College 
building was dedicated in 1893. All sorts of experi- 
ences have resulted from renting a large house near 
the University campus and opening it as Young 
Women's Christian Association headquarters with 
home accommodations for the secretary and several 
members. Other Associations have been amply pro- 
vided for in the women's building designed for head- 



152 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

quarters for all the women's organizations. This as- 
sures the general secretary a strategic location for 
her office. 

From the very first every Association has craved 
for its president a student of outstanding rank, in 
scholarship as well as in administrative ahility and 
Christian influence. But how to exercise the second 
requisite without detriment to the first qualification 
was at times a problem. This led the University of 
Wisconsin in 1895 to elect a graduate, Mary Arm- 
strong, as general secretary at a nominal salary. Es- 
telle Bennett was called to the University of Minne- 
sota in 1896. Other universities adopted the idea, 
though they often found that the woman they wanted 
was a graduate from another university, was com- 
manding a higher salary, and needed a more thorough 
professional training than was at first taken into con- 
sideration. Some of these secretaries have been of 
the greatest help in introducing student government, 
or bringing recognition to higher standards of stu- 
dent life as well as in Association administration and 
in working on vital problems of thought and life with 
individual students. Each decade placed certain new 
emphases. Even the terms were being reversed : * * The 
Christian Student'' of the nineteenth century became 
**The Student Christian" in the twentieth. 



CHAPTER XII 

COUNTRY ASSOCIATIONS 

IT may be said that the Young Women's Christian 
Association in rural communities has been ex- 
pressed in terms of the college, the city and the 
county. The time is coming when it will express it- 
self in terms of the country. 

The first intimation of country work is found in 
Iowa. In a letter dated February 9, 1885, one reads, 

The weather with us this winter has been very severe, 
the thermometer reaching 39° below zero. We have been 
obliged to give up our Bible class, as the weather has been 
so very cold we were unable to get to our places of meeting. 
Some of our members had a distance of four or five miles 
and it made it almost impossible to attend. To-day the 
fiercest snow storm that I ever saw has been raging. It 
commenced yesterday afternoon and I am afraid will rage 
all night. God pity the poor. 

Again under date of April 23, 1885, from the same 
correspondent there is another communication. 

We feel more encouraged not only by our being able to 
have our regular Bible class again, but the manner in which 
the girls have taken hold of the work. They all seem more 
interested in Bible study than last summer, and we all felt 
that we were profited by last summer's work. We have held 
several Gospel meetings with the Young Men's Christian 
Association of Pleasant Valley lately, and expect to hold 
them as often as we can, for they have been very well 

153 



154 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

attended, notwithstanding the usual bad spring roads. At 
one of these, two started on the right way. In the last 
year, three or four of my most intimate friends have been 
brought to Christ. Our Bible class has twenty members 
and our Association about the same. 

This was the Association in Pleasant Valley town- 
ship, Johnson County, Iowa. The school house, which 
provided a true religious center, was situated seven 
miles from Iowa City, the seat of the University of 
Iowa, and four miles from the nearest church. In the 
summer of 1884 the young men in the neighborhood 
organized a Young Men's Christian Association after 
the pattern of the student Associations to which sev- 
eral belonged, and a few months later the young 
women adopted a similar institution. 

Each organization had its own business meetings 
and Bible class sessions, for which they came together 
in private houses. The joint gospel meetings were 
held every other Sunday evening at the school house, 
with an average attendance of sixty, and were con- 
ducted by leaders chosen alternately from the two 
Associations. They set an example followed by the 
young people in adjoining neighborhoods. There 
were also social gatherings and lectures. 

After a few years when some of the leaders had 
left home for professional service in the Association 
movement and elsewhere, the Pleasant Valley work 
lapsed, but the results had already been recorded as 
*' elevating social pleasures, interest in higher literary 
culture and forming of sterling Christian character." 

This Association had also been a charter member of 
the Iowa State Young Women 's Christian Association 



COUNTRY ASSOCIATIONS 155 

and one of its officers had been on the committee which 
drew up the articles of organization of this first State 
Association in which affiliation was not limited to stu- 
dent Young Women's Christian Associations, but 
open to any Young Women's Christian Association in 
the State, provided its object was the maintenance of 
prayer meetings, Bible study, individual effort and 
the development of missionary interest. 

For a time, enthusiastic Association leaders, going 
home to villages and small towns or becoming teachers 
in these small communities, frequently organized 
what they called local or city Associations, but what 
were really the spirit and activities of their beloved 
college organization transplanted bodily into another 
soil. That all did not flourish was not so much due 
to the sterility of the soil as to the fact that the plants 
were not adapted to it, or that the field was often 
abandoned, though rarely neglected by the gardener. 
Of the first twenty such Associations listed in five 
States in 1887, only one had as many as eighty-five 
members; that was in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which 
had Association rooms and the beginnings of a genu- 
ine city work. Eighteen of these town Associations 
were found in Iowa, Kansas and Michigan, in which 
states the Christian Endeavor Movement, started in 
1881, was just getting a foothold. 

In one or two cities in Ohio there were Women's 
Christian Associations, conducting a class in sewing 
for little girls or helping in relief work, but as far 
removed from genuine Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation work in small towns on the one hand, as these 



156 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

student Association extensions were on the other. 
Evidently these were not the right ways. 

But not for a moment were the girls forgotten. 
People were thinking, and occasionally some one 
wrote out her thoughts : 

Many girls in country regions have ambitions which 
grow faster than their opportunities; they long for some- 
thing more than their circumstances will allow, or the place 
affords; their active spirits grow restless and dissatisfied, 
and, allured on by bright prospects of good positions, educa- 
tional and social advantages, they speed city-ward. This 
is not as it should be. Let no one think because a place is 
too small to demand and support a full fledged Young 
Women's Christian Association, that therefore nothing can 
be done for young women. 

Another solution was coming, and as in two pre- 
ceding plans of Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion work in country and small towns, coming from 
the devotion of former student Association leaders. 
A Carleton college graduate of 1896, teaching in the 
High School of Preston, Minnesota, was asked to form 
a class for Bible study. As the interest grew, some 
of these class members became pupil teachers for other 
circles in Preston, and hearing of what was going for- 
ward in Preston, women in other small towns in Fill- 
more County formed Bible circles. 

The Minnesota State Committee kept in close touch 
and took counsel with Mr. Robert Weidensall, the 
pathfinder of the International Young Men's Chris- 
tian Association, who had added to his pioneer efforts 
in student and railroad Associations, an exploration 
of the rural and small town field. The result was 



COUNTRY ASSOCIATIONS 157 

that he had brought under way county Associations 
in Illinois, Nebraska, Kentucky and elsewhere. The 
state secretary of Minnesota, Helen F. Barnes, ar- 
ranged a convention of the Bible circles of Fillmore 
County for December 31, 1897, to January 2, 1898, 
Mr. Weidensall was one of the speakers, and when 
the delegates had organized the first county Young 
Women's Christian Association in the world, he met 
with the County Committee and helped in outlining 
their work. The convention, like' the Bible circles, 
gave first attention to study of God's word, but there 
was a social evening in the Preston Association circle 
rooms — for Preston was the exception to the rule in 
having local headquarters — and other helpful con- 
vention features. In March, 1898, Dodge County also 
effected an organization. By spring there was the 
following County roster in Minnesota: 

Fillmore County: Preston— three circles (for 
seniors, young ladies and juniors), Cherry Grove — 
a senior and a junior circle, Spring Valley, Etna, 
Fillmore, Washington, Hamilton, Granger. 

Dodge County: West Concord, Kasson, Dodge 
Center, and a country class near Dodge Center. 

Olmstead County: Stewartville, Cummingsville, 
Eyota. 

Other Bible circles on the same plan had been 
started out of the State. 

As the Young Men's Christian Association had 
made a pre-eminent success of county work with a 
supervising secretary, so the Minnesota workers 
learned conversely that a secretary was indispensable. 



158 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

because without one, the local circles lost interest and 
gradually disbanded, and the county Association dis- 
integrated. The full scheme had not been tried, it 
ceased, not failed. People still had faith in some 
far off event, or plan, or leader, which would help the 
country girls come into their own. 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE CONFERENCES OF THE WOMEN *S CHRISTIAN 
ASSOCIATIONS 

THE Women ^s Christian Association of Hart- 
ford, Connecticut, invited the officers of all 
similar Associations known at that time to 
come and celebrate with them their fourth anniver- 
sary, on Sunday, October 8, 1871. 

The Sabbath was devoted to the anniversary exer- 
cises, held in the Pearl Street Church; the following 
Monday and Tuesday to the conference, in the same 
church, for which fifteen delegates had come from 
Boston, Providence, Lowell, Buffalo, Washington, Cin- 
cinnati and Philadelphia. 

The presiding officer was that elect lady, Mrs. John 
Davis, president of the Association in Cincinnati. 
The program was made up of reports from these 
eight cities and from thirteen others not represented 
by delegates, in addition to discussion of the follow- 
ing topics : 

1. What are the greatest obstacles to the successful work- 

ing of our Associations? 

2. How shall we secure efficient committees? 

3. How shall we establish systematic payments? 

4. How shall we best gain a permanent influence over the 

industrial young woman? 

169 



160 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

5. What is the best method of Bible teaching in the classes 

of young women connected with the Homes or Associa- 
tions ? 

6. Is it expedient to have a department for the more thor- 

ough training of sewing girls in the Homes? 

7. Is it economy or promotive of family feeling to have 

the Home table on the restaurant plan? 

Mr. H. Thane Miller of Cincinnati, who had a bent 
for organization and a gift of song, sang frequently, 
as well as spoke. One selection was '^More Love to 
Thee, Christ,*' which had just appeared. Mrs. 
Lamson of Boston described the Young Women's 
Christian Association homes in London which she had 
lately visited. A trip was made to the still uncom- 
pleted Hartford building. The news of the Chicago 
fire was made known, and resolutions were sent to the 
women in Chicago. 

The call to the conference had emphasized the meet- 
ings for prayer, social converse and discussion of im- 
portant questions which would be both pleasant and 
profitable for those actively engaged in ** striving to 
protect and to benefit in every way their young sis- 
ters, who are toiling for their own and others' sup- 
port, with many trials and temptations." This was 
all realized and a resolution was adopted providing 
for similar meetings to be held at intervals of not 
more than two years. To carry this resolution into 
effect a committee of arrangements was appointed, 
which selected Philadelphia as the place of the next 
meeting. 

Here forty-eight delegates from seventeen other As- 
sociations listened to a comprehensive, lucid address 




Women's Christian Association, 

Hartford, Conn. 

First Building Constructed for Association Purposes 



W. C. A. CONFERENCES 161 

by Mrs. Davis, the retiring president, in which, she 
reviewed the work for young women and other kinds 
of ministry offered by the organizations represented, 
counting among the results already attained, the ex- 
tent of the movement and the spirit in which it was 
carried on. As before, the program was occupied 
chiefly with reports from cities, and discussion of top- 
ics previously announced. These were opened by 
papers on * * Boarding Homes for Young Women, How 
Can We Best Secure the True Aim of Such Homes ? ' * 
** American Girls for Domestic Service," and an ad- 
dress on ^* Personal Consecration to Christ Essential 
to Success in Association Work," by Mrs. Hannah 
Whitall Smith. When the question arose as to the 
eligibility of voters, it was decided that any member 
present of any Christian Association should be con- 
sidered a voter ; and a list was printed in that report 
of thirty- two cities where Women's Christian Associa- 
tions were established, two containing Young 
Women's Christian Associations, two Young Ladies' 
Branches were also mentioned, thirty-six city Associ- 
ations in all in the United States. 

So far no organization had been effected for this 
conference. In Pittsburgh in 1875, however, the 
question of a more definite form of organization was 
presented and a constitution was adopted providing 
— under the name of Conference of the Women's 
Christian Associations of the United States and Brit- 
ish Provinces — for an executive committee "charged 
with the selection of topics for the conference, with the 
examination of the credentials of delegates, with the 



162 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

selection of persons to open these topics or to present 
papers upon them. They shall prepare and publish a 
report of the conferences, conduct correspondence 
with, and encourage visitation among the Associations, 
promote the work of existing societies, stimulate or- 
ganizations in places where they do not already exist, 
and transact such other business as may be entrusted 
to them by the conference.'' There was also pro- 
vision for a financial policy and for the appointment 
of a general secretary. In order, however, to have 
more time for thorough discussion, this constitution 
was reconsidered before adjournment, and a commit- 
tee authorized to provide possible substitutes for cer- 
tain of the sections. In consequence the Montreal 
Conference of 1877 adopted the following constitu- 
tion : 

Article I — ^Name 

This organization shall be called "The Intei'national 
Conference of Women's Christian Associations." 

Article II — Object 

Its object shall be mutual conference about the work of 
these Associations. 

Article III — Meetings 
The meetings of the conference shall be held once in two 
years. 

Article IV — Representation 

Each Association of one hundred members or less shall 
be entitled to two delegates, and for every one hundred mem- 
bers one additional delegate. 

The accompanying rules provided that at the clos- 
ing session of the conference the president should ap- 
point **a committee of three whose duty it shall be to 



W. C. A. CONFERENCES 163 

arrange for the next conference by making selections 
of topics for discussion and appointing persons to 
open the same. They shall also prepare a program 
for all meetings. The secretaries, with the assistance 
of the president, shall prepare and publish the pro- 
ceedings of the conference," and further, that ^'no 
standing or special committee shall contract any 
money indebtedness without previous appropriation 
from the conference." 

During the Philadelphia Conference of 1873 com- 
munications from Rome, Italy and Salt Lake City, 
Utah, had led to the appointment of a Foreign Com- 
mittee and a Home Conmiittee to look into the possi- 
bility of aiding evangelical work in these two centers. 
This action and the opening of Associations in Can- 
ada, had led the Committee on Arrangements for the 
following meeting to call for an International Con- 
ference, and to invite Associations of other countries 
to send delegates. Such a delegate was Mrs. P. D. 
Browne of Montreal, who brought with her an invi- 
tation for the 1877 Conference to come over the bor- 
der into Canada. Quebec and Belleville, Ontario, 
sent accounts of work. Frances Ridley Havergal 
wrote a poem for the occasion. Mrs. Pennefather of 
London (who was afterwards successor to Miss Ro- 
barts as head of the Prayer Union) sent a paper on 
Reformatory Work, and another on The Deaconess 
House of Mildmay Park. Protestant mission work 
in France and Holland and Canada was reported and 
a letter read from Mile. Anna de Perrot of Neuchatel, 
Switzerland, with whose name the Union Interna- 



164 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

tional des Amies de la Jeune Fille is connected. Sim- 
ilar reports were rendered for two or three succeeding 
conferences. 

The Foreign Committee appointed in 1873 recom- 
mended later that the work under consideration in 
Rome be referred to the existing Missionary Societies, 
and the Home Committee presented a list of Associa- 
tions in good condition and active sympathy the one 
with the other. 

As truly as the personnel of these Conferences rep- 
resented the Christian devotion and power of the 
women of the time, so the papers read by these ladies 
reflected the economic aspects of women's lives. Mrs. 
Terhune's brilliant paper on **Our Daughters,'' read 
in 1875, has already been cited. A quotation from 
Mrs. McCollins' paper read in 1877 may find a place 
here. 

Every conceivable machine for labor-saving is invented. 
Work that would take days to perform by hand is done in 
so many hours. Even the devices of Dame Fashion, which 
were entirely beyond the scope of machinery when first 
introduced, are at once seized upon by the remorseless in- 
ventor, and before the article attains to common use, the 
iron shaft and buzzing wheel have stolen from human fingers 
the work that would have secured a competency to hundreds. 
Every department of labor has been invaded by this inex- 
orable genius, agricultural, manufacturing, mercantile and 
domestic — ^yea, even science and art are robbed of much 
that is pleasant to the eye by the inevitable machine. 
With all this we are now struggling, but wait until Time, 
the great harmonizer, shall adjust all these innovations to 
the needs and capacities of the human family. 

Many of us remember the hue and cry raised by the 
farmers and others when the railroads were first opened 



W. C. A. CONFERENCES 165 

through our country. There would be no work for man or 
use for horses! What would become of all those connected 
with the stage coaches, etc., etc.? But look now, and be- 
hold the hundreds employed by the railroads where the 
tens were needed by the stage coach. 

The inventor has created this necessity for laborers. Take 
the sewing machine, which has a place in every family. 
How loudly it was cried down at first, but with it has come 
an increased demand for sewing. New styles and stitches, 
endless hemmings, tuckings, frillings and rufflings, that 
would never have been dreamed of, are the result. Inven- 
tion has created the necessity. 

Other notable contributions to these conferences 
were the papers by Miss Juliet Corson in 1879 on 
*' Cooking Schools," and by Miss Grace H. Dodge in 
1885 on ''Practical Suggestions Relating to Moral 
Elevation and Preventive Work Among Girls." 

Among the visitors to the New York Conference in 
1887 were the English party consisting of Lord Kin- 
naird, who had just succeeded Lord Shaftesbury as 
president of the British Young Women's Christian 
Associations, and his sisters the Honorables Emily and 
Gertrude Kinnaird, Mr. G. L. Dashwood, a generous 
patron of the London Associations, and Professor 
Henry Drummond of Edinburgh, who had been teach- 
ing Bible classes at the Young Men's Student Con- 
ferences at Northfield. Their observations on Chris- 
tian work, as done by women in the States, were most 
illuminating, as were their accounts of similar activi- 
ties on their side of the water. 

The steady increase in equipment, forces and re- 
sults of the constituent Associations was after all the 
most absorbing topic at all of these ten conferences, 



166 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

shown by the local reports and the practical papers 
written by the women who had brought these things 
to pass. This advance has already been noted in the 
preceding chapters on local city Associations, their 
organization and development. 

The future of the conference will be treated later 
on. 



I 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION — LATER THE AMEKICAN 
COMMITTEE 

PUBLICATIONS, Correspondence, Visitation, 
Conferences: the members of the Student 
Young Women's Christian Associations thus 
dissected their special desires to be realized from a 
general movement. These had been furnished 
through their neighborly relations to the Intercollegi- 
ate Young Men's Christian Association, but, as the 
Iowa Convention had voted, they wanted "an Inter- 
collegiate secretary of their own, a young woman." 
Mrs. Miller's committee did not seem able to help in 
these regards. The conferences of 1881 and 1883, at 
which it had been appointed, had neglected to make 
any appropriation, although most deeply interested 
in the work for which they held their committee re- 
sponsible. The monthly periodicals, valuable to the 
"Women's Christian Associations, were primarily the 
organs of local city Associations and did not approach 
student questions. The same was true of the biennial 
conferences, and no representatives from the Wom- 
en's Christian Association were sent to attend the 
state conventions where the bulk of the membership 
came together to discuss topics germane to their par- 

187 



168 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

ticular concerns. The young women felt that these 
elements might be supplied if back of the Interna- 
tional Conference there were an international organ- 
ization, constituted with both city and student inter- 
ests in view, and electing at conferences a permanent 
committee or board, to execute between conferences 
the wishes there expressed by the representative of 
the local Associations. With a fixe'd headquarters and 
a committee sitting regularly to consider student 
matters, there could be a large, helpful correspond- 
ence and the publication of necessary supplies, and 
a college secretary could be sent out to visit individ- 
ual student Associations and meet with the large 
groups of delegates who attended the state conven- 
tions. 

Consequently in the fall of 1885 the seven organ- 
ized states at their conventions or through their execu- 
tive committees united in framing a resolution to be of- 
fered to the conference which was to be entertained by 
the Women's Christian Association of Cincinnati in 
October, 1885. Anna Downey, the state chairman 
of Indiana, and Ida L. Schell, chairman of Iowa, 
accompanied to this conference Naomi Knight of 
Nebraska, formerly of the Northwestern College 
Association of Illinois. Other students were present 
and gave verbal reports. 

It had been the expectation of the committee to 
present at that same session the following proposi- 
tion. 

1. That a permanent international organization of the 
Young Women's Christian Associations be form^ed whose 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 169 

object shall be to promote the physical, social, mental and 
spiritual welfare of young women, whose membership shall 
consist of Young Women's Christian Associations whose 
active, i.e., voting and office holding membership, shall be 
limited to young women who are members in good standing 
of an evangelical church. 

2. That a permanent executive committee be appointed by 
the Convention to oversee the execution of its plans in the 
development of its work. 

However, in many private conversations with lead- 
ing women at the conference, not one was found will- 
ing to support the proposition at that time. It was 
only eight years before at Montreal that their pres- 
ent working constitution had been substituted for 
that of 1875, which had proposed a permanent organ- 
ization. Many Associations were carrying on impor- 
tant departments other than the promotion of the 
physical, social, mental and spiritual life of young 
women and might not wish to limit their activities. 
The large range of work did not call for a uniform 
basis, and while in most of the earliest formed As- 
sociations the active members were communicants of 
evangelical churches, it would not be feasible to 
recommend that basis for general adoption. With- 
out such a regularly organized body to define its func- 
tions any executive committee would naturally be 
impossible. The college representatives, fearing that 
a public presentation would only cause trouble and 
come to nothing, since they had been informed, un- 
officially of course, that the resolutions if presented 
would be laid upon the table indefinitely, did not 
offer the resolutions they had prepared, and some of 
the ladies understood that action was to be postponed 



170 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

until 1887 when it would be up for free discussion at 
tlie New York Conference. But the girls did not 
seem to realize that and reported to the State Com- 
mittees that they had failed in their mission. 

That they had come with a mission, and that mission 
a proposition to unite in a new organization, was un- 
known to the main body of delegates, who supposed 
from the local accounts and the report of the Commit- 
tee on Schools and Colleges, that these student As- 
sociations belonged to the conferences in the same sense 
as the delegates from cities belonged. The invitation 
to participate in the conference had always been gen- 
eral and hearty and no definite application to join 
was made by any organization. Societies doing the 
work of Women's Christian Associations were eligible 
to send representatives and read reports: only the 
number of delegates from each was limited. These 
meetings were for the purpose of mutual conference; 
in fact, it was definitely held that delegates were sent 
to get information rather than to decide measures. At 
the students' conventions, however, the regular dele- 
gates came from the evangelical Associations which 
had applied for affiliation. Women guests from other 
Associations, no matter what their form of organiza- 
tion, were received as corresponding members only. 
Hence the local Associations did not suppose they be- 
longed to the International Conference, to join which 
they had not made application, and the State Associa- 
tions did not suppose they belonged as they had not 
been encouraged to unfold a plan of joining which 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 171 

they came to the conference to propose. There was 
complete misunderstanding on both sides. 

When the state student conventions were informed 
that nothing had been accomplished at Cincinnati 
relative to a National Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation, they decided to unite among themselves, and 
elected delegates to a Constitutional Convention, to be 
held at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, in August, 1886. 
Several states, keeping closely in mind their hope for 
a national woman secretary, pledged funds in advance 
for the purpose ; others followed the example of Iowa 
still further and amended their constitution so that 
other than student Associations might be incorporated 
into the proposed body. 

Lake Geneva, like Lake Chautauqua, and other small 
inland bodies of water, has acquired a reputation from 
the assemblies congregating there, which carries such 
weight in certain circles that the question of its own 
natural beauty is rarely raised, but its contour, its 
wooded banks and its shining waters had been lovely 
in themselves long before public attention was called 
to the place. At one of the promontory-like entrances 
to Williams Bay, west of the town, a clergyman's fam- 
ily had for some years conducted a camp for Chris- 
tian people of congenial tastes, and here at Camp Col- 
lie, secretaries of the Illinois and Wisconsin Young 
Men's Christian Associations had planted the first sum- 
mer conference, under the name Western Secretarial 
Institute, in 1884. At that time the Chicago trains 
which afforded the best railroad connection, reached 



172 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

only the town of Lake Geneva at the eastern end of 
the lake, from whence steamboats carried the passen- 
gers to the few hotels and private homes located at 
other points along the shore. The Association men 
brought their families and made the season vacational 
as well as vocational in character. Most of the young 
women student leaders who had graduated were teach- 
ing in high schools or colleges, hence the summer was 
the propitious time for their meeting. The wives of 
some of the leading secretaries, interested in the 
student work, were to be at Camp Collie in August of 
1886, hence the invitation to hold this convention at 
Camp Collie came about very naturally and was ac- 
cepted all the more readily, since Chicago was the geo- 
graphical and railroad center of the nine states co- 
operating and Lake Geneva was only two hours dis- 
tant. 

Nineteen delegates met on August 6 at Bay View 
Cottage, Camp Collie, and continued in session a full 
week. Misses Knight and Schell explained the out- 
come of their visit to Cincinnati, the items of the 
articles of organization as approved by the state con- 
ventions were discussed, there was much prayer and 
quiet consideration of the whole subject — for it was 
a solemn responsibility, this launching of a national 
Christian movement — and then on August 11, 1886, 
the National Association of the Young Women's Chris- 
tian Associations of the United States was formed. 
Its object was the organization and development of 
Young Women's Christian Associations for the promo- 
tion of the social, physical, intellectual and spiritual 



OFPICB OF 

ROBT WEIDENSALL, 

WKSTERN SECRB7ARV OF THt EXEClTriVB COMMITTEE 

VOtTNC men's christian ASSOOATIONS 

OP THK UNITED STATES AND BRITISH PROVINCBS, 

Na 148 Madison Street. 
Chicago. Ill 



A.-V..VXX;: eo. ^ (tf- (?e^ ^^^<.V ec^. /^/-^ _ , 

Oa..^a 'Zcc^..^ Muld^ ^M^/^ -j^uied^O^ul [U^I^JQ 







QAA/yt'Cu^ pplyeyft^-^^, ^^j^es^^-z?/ ^le'^^^^^^W ^ 




Facsimile of Autographs of Delegates Who Formed tlie 
"National Association," August, I88G 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 173 

condition of young women, its membership was State 
Associations composed exclusively of evangelical local 
Associations, its supervisory body was a National Com- 
mittee of the State Chairman, with at least seven other 
members, its headquarters were fixed in Chicago and 
the choice of its officers and agents was left to the Na- 
tional Committee. 

One of the four other members then elected was 
Mrs. John V. Farwell, Jr., of Chicago. Ellen Drum- 
mond Farwell had inherited from her father a direct 
way of approaching matters and the judicial quality of 
reserving decision until all available information was 
considered. Her sweet womanly dignity, the humility 
of her Christian life, and her rare sincerity combined 
to make her an ideal chairman of this new committee. 
Association principles were not strange to her, for the 
Farwell family had always been influential in local 
and International Young Men's Christian Association 
councils. Her large circle of friends had confidence 
in any movement which she could heartily espouse, 
and so thoroughly did she take hold of all the issues 
involved, that the state workers immediately recog- 
nized her as a providential leader and rejoiced in their 
headquarters committee. 

Three years later, seventy-four delegates from 
twelve states met in Bloomington, Illinois, for the sec- 
ond convention. Each year in the interim the resi- 
dent and non-resident members of the National Com- 
mittee had conferred in three day sessions on the mat- 
ters entrusted to them, so when they renderd an ac- 
count of their stewardship at Bloomington, they were 



174. FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

able to say, what the delegates knew from their own 
participation throughout the field, that to some de- 
gree the four underlying desires had been met. The 
new committee had carried on extensive correspond- 
ence ; they had published model student, city and state 
constitutions, and had begun issuing a quarterly peri- 
odical; they had secured a general secretary, Net- 
tie Dunn, daughter of the president of Hillsdale Col- 
lege, Michigan, and she had made Association visits 
in eleven states, and attended eighteen of the twenty- 
nine conventions held by the twelve organized states. 
Up to this time the office had been the residence of the 
recording secretary of the National Committee, but 
one of the recommendations adopted with most satis- 
faction was that authorizing the securing of an office 
and engaging of an office secretary. When the one 
room at 153 La Salle Street was rented the next month, 
and furnished with purchased carpet and chair and a 
donated desk, the entire office and publication depart- 
ments, the correspondence files, literature for sale, 
printed reports, and all documents were conveyed 
thither in one clothes hamper. 

The biennium of 1889-91 was the period of calling 
secretaries. Corabel Tarr, preceptress of Napa Col- 
lege, California, came to the Committee in June as as- 
sociate general secretary, with Miss Dunn. Thirsa F. 
Hall became the office secretary, succeeding Elizabeth 
Wilson, who had come temporarily to the position. 
Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and most of the other 
states put secretaries into the field for whole or part 
time. Newly organized cities, like Kansas City, Mis- 




Mrs. John V. Farwell, Jr., 

First President of the National Association 
American Committee ) 



Later the 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 175 

souri, and Minneapolis, needed capable executive of- 
ficers and the question of how to find secretaries was 
one of the most insistent, and its answer the most vital. 

The beginning of a financial basis had been made in 
this biennium also. By '89 the total amount received 
was $1,200; by '91 it was $5,000, to which Mr. T. W. 
Phillips' subscription of $1,000 was the largest known 
at that time. In fact, for a new subscriber to send 
twenty percent of the budget in one gift might seem 
monumental even in the later days when supervisory 
support of Young Women's Christian Associations has 
been found by many to be a sound investment. 

Canada was present at the 1891 convention at Scran- 
ton, Pa., in the persons of student and city delegates, 
for though such Associations had been affiliated be- 
fore, the constitution had been formally amended in 
1889 to read International in place of National Associ- 
ation, and Miss Tarr had recently made a tour in that 
section. 

The answer to the question, '*How to find secre- 
taries" came in the summer of 1891. This answer 
was, * ' Train them. ' ' Near the Straits of Mackinac, on 
the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, lies Petoskey Bay, 
and here the Bay View Summer Assembly and Uni- 
versity had convened for some years. A great audi- 
torium stood on the grounds, many buildings for 
various secular and religious classes, a gymnasium, the 
headquarters of organizations and a real village of 
summer cottages and boarding houses. The newest 
of these buildings, Epworth Home, had been obtained 
for the proposed Summer Bible and Training School 



176 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

for class rooms and dormitories, and a three weeks* 
program for the Association students was set up. 
Each student bought a regular assembly ticket for two 
dollars and a half, and paid five dollars for the Associ- 
ation course for the season, one dollar for room rent 
weekly, and three fifty for table board. The school 
had been well advertised, the location was favorably 
known, the idea was novel and attractive, and people 
came beyond expectation, sixty-one in all. They filled 
Epworth Home and overflowed in all directions. Of 
the sixty-one from nine states, fifteen were secretaries 
in local or traveling positions, who previously had had 
no further training than office-bearing in college As- 
sociations and volunteer work with the same State 
Committee, perhaps, which later called them as em- 
ployed ofiicers. 

The unique feature of the School was the secretaries' 
class conducted by Misses Dunn and Tarr, where the 
Young Women's Christian Association as an exact 
science was expounded an hour each day. These les- 
sons covered the history, fundamental principles and 
methods of the local, state, and International organiza- 
tions, with particular attention to the secretary's re- 
lation to it all. One other daily hour was the Bible 
training class with ten lessons each by Miss Emma 
Dryer of the Chicago Bible Society and Mr. J. H. Elli- 
ott of the Minneapolis Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion. Another daily hour was occupied by Pro- 
fessor M. S. Terry of Garret Biblical Institute of 
Northwestern University. Then there were eighteen 
lessons by Miss Evelyn MacDougal of Hillsdale Col- 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 177 

lege in **Delsarte," light apparatus and free gym- 
nastics, and every evening at sunset a devotional 
meeting conducted by different leaders. 

In addition to this each attendant wished to ex- 
tract the full value from her Chautauqua ticket and 
filled in her off hours with lectures and entertain- 
ments in the auditorium, where one might hear Doctor 
James M. Buckley in popular Bible lectures, or the 
Fisk Jubilee Singers, or Ida Benfey in **Adam Bede" 
and "The Mill on the Floss,'' or Mrs. Margaret E. 
Sangster and ''Marion Harland" in the Home Makers 
Circle, or could sing in the Assembly Chorus or see 
scientific demonstrations. One could sample but could 
not exhaust the program. A few tried it and were ex- 
hausted thereby, so outings instead of improving 
lectures were arranged for the interstices between As- 
sociation engagements. Trips to Mackinac and Oden, 
and the outdoor sports in charge of Mary S. Dunn were 
allowed their rights. All Association customs have 
their beginnings, and credit for the first marshmallow 
toast is claimed by this outing committee. 

Everybody was happy and everybody was bene- 
fitted. The conference had come to stay, but several 
lessons were learned. Three weeks was too long a 
session. Grounds must be reserved for the Young 
Women's Christian Association and the purposes of 
that conference alone. The laity from colleges and 
cities and State Committees wanted the summer school 
as much as did secretaries, and the program must be 
constructed with these in mind. 

Two weeks was the duration of the 1892 conference. 



178 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

It was held on the grounds near Camp Collie, Lake 
Geneva, which the Western Secretarial Institute had 
bought and equipped with public buildings and tents 
for living quarters, and the program was divided into 
four discussional conferences besides the Secretaries 
Class and the Bible study and platform meetings in 
which all united. In the gymnasium department 
basket ball was the innovation. The attendance was 
one hundred and forty-two and so carefully were the 
statistics collated that the ages of the guests were regis- 
tered, and averaged twenty-four years, varying from 
fifteen minimum to forty-two maximum. Only a sixth 
of the delegates were secretaries. The summer confer- 
ence had come to stay indeed, but the question * ' How 
to train secretaries'* had also again come to the front. 

Notwithstanding the recognition of the several 
groups and the provision in separate councils for the 
demands of each, the conference was a unit, and that 
in a truer sense than the previous year when all at- 
tended the same class. The peace and retirement of 
the conference site effected this. All were of one ac- 
cord in one place. Those spiritual results possible 
only when people have somewhat of leibure for the 
formation of religious habits were manifest. 

A girl might have heard for some time of the im- 
portance of the Morning Watch. Here she found that 
it was the practice of most of the people who seemed 
to be accomplishing things for God, and she dis- 
covered for herself the glory and the blessing of a 
time with her Master in those early summer mornings 
by the shimmering lake. She had always been pre- 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 179 

paring lessons for Bible classes as a student or a Sun- 
day school teacher: here the Bible truly seemed to be 
God's own word to her. His plan for her then was 
what she wanted to find out. Fresh revelations came 
in her daily private study as well as in the class hour. 
Most of the conference attendants were Association 
workers in some capacity. They knew Jesus Christ 
as their Saviour and as their Leader. Now they were 
making his acquaintance anew as their Friend. 

Some one said that in the three days' convention 
where she had been, the new impressions had come so 
fast and hard that she felt a reaction on her return 
home, but here she stayed long enough in this rare 
Christian atmosphere to get her vigorous impressions, 
her reaction, and gain her balance before going back 
to the everyday life. Others said that their sense 
of Christ's presence and his place as the Head of the 
Conference became so indelibly fixed in their minds 
that thereafter it was possible always to practice the 
presence of God. The testimony of later conferences 
corroborated this year 's witness that it was not the de- 
liverance of any one speaker or one sermon or one ad- 
dress which stood out, although every year the ablest 
preachers and teachers were on the program; but it 
was the working together of the whole that brought in- 
dividuals to understand the Christian life and enter 
into it as they had never done before. 

Not one group but the whole conference looked 
steadily at the task of the evangelization of the world, 
and some who were at first incredulous at the idea of 
there being a missionary call for them, heard it at 



180 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Geneva and stayed not and stopped not until they 
had reached that foreign post in which they might 
serve the Lord of the whole earth. 

It may be that this new way of looking at the 
foreign missionary field was partly due to the pres- 
ence of Mrs. L. D. Wishard, just returned from a four 
years' tour around the world, in which a new chapter 
had been begun in the administration of Christian mis- 
sions. The first Christian Association in Asia had 
been formed in 1884 in Jaffna College, Ceylon, by 
Frank K. Sanders, a teacher there. Two years later 
Rev. Harlan P. Beach organized another in Tung 
Chow, China. Appeals were received through the 
mission boards for city and student Young Men's 
Christian Associations of the North American pattern 
in India and elsewhere. The World's and Interna- 
tional Committees of the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociations authorized Mr. L. D. Wishard to set out on 
a tour of visitation. Mrs. Wishard accompanied him 
and had unusual opportunities for seeing the part 
granted to the Association movement in the foreign 
missionary enterprise of the churches. The men's 
convention of 1889 "authorized its Committee to un- 
dertake Association extension and expansion abroad 
through foreign missionary secretaries, provided this 
were done on invitation from the church agencies and 
missionaries already on the foreign field, and in co- 
operation with them in their work, and provided also 
that the money needed were separately solicited as a 
distinct fund for this department of the Committee's 
work." The same day of October, 1889, saw John T. 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 181 

Swift start "West for Tokyo, Japan, and David Mc- 
Conaughy sail East for Madras, India. There were 
even visions of what Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation secretaries might do in helping the young 
women of India and Japan and other remote lands to 
come into their Christian birthright. 

But there had come into being that spring another 
force tending to draw the interest of members out 
from any self satisfied, self centered, national con- 
cerns into the larger conception of what the word ' ' as- 
sociation'' means, w^hen prefaced by the word Chris- 
tian. It will be remembered that foreign branches 
were included in the first national scheme of organiza- 
tion in England and that their United Central Coun- 
cil invited delegates from foreign lands to meet with 
them in London at their annual meeting, April, 1892, 
to discuss Association work in all parts of the globe 
and if possible form a AVorld's Association. 

Miss R. F. ]\Iorse of New York City, chairman of 
the New York State executive committee and a mem- 
ber of the International Committee, and Miss Tarr 
were appointed to represent America. They found 
there both men and women leaders from Australia, 
France, India, Norway, Sweden, Spain and Switzer- 
land. Since in several lands pastors and other gentle- 
men were office holders, these gave reports of work 
done in these several countries and spoke of the in- 
dustrial and social conditions which would make ad- 
vance desirable or difficult. When it became evident 
t6 all that there was no radical difficulty which made 
an international organization impossible, a small com- 



182 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

mittee was appointed to take up the details involved. 
The English and American members of this commit- 
tee were authorized to draw up a constitution which 
should leave each nation entirely free as to its own 
national methods, growth and all national action, and 
should insist only on the one essential, that the basis 
of membership for all officers and voting members 
be such as would embody the fundamental principles 
, of the Young Women 's Christian Association. 
/«^U T^Q years later the constitution was framed and 
J \ formally accepted by the British and American execu- 
tive bodies, which agreed to be responsible for the ex- 
penses of the new organization until the first Inter- 
national Conference. The national Associations of 
Norway and Sweden completed the charter member- 
ship. 

All Americans were greatly interested in this sec- 
tion of the World's Constitution: ''The General 
Secretary shall be of a nationality other than that 
where the Headquarters of the Committee are lo- 
cated,'* for by common consent London was selected 
as headquarters. That meant a secretary from the 
States. We in America thought at first that we knew 
of no one suitable for secretary, but God's providence 
had been preparing by education in this country and 
abroad, by experience as a city executive, a state 
traveling secretary and a member of the staff of the 
International Committee, the person who was elected 
and who for ten years thereafter helped to mold As- 
sociation thought and action. This w^as IMiss Annie 
M. Reynolds of North Haven, Connecticut, the sister 




Miss A. M. Reynolds, 
While Visiting Russia as World's Secretary 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 183 

of the James Bronson Eeynolds wlio had made the 
basic tour for Christian work in continental universi- 
ties. But it was not alone Miss Reynolds' trustworthy 
acquaintance with European tongues, laws and insti- 
tutions, nor her sympathetic knowledge of Church 
missions acquired from her youth up ; it was her eager- 
ness to see situations from all the angles from which 
others were seeing them, and to carry out their com- 
bined judgment, that made the executive committee in 
London realize they could now begin attaining their 
object: "the federation, development, and extension 
of Young Women's Christian Associations in all 
lands." 

As soon as this new amalgamation was effected, new 
lines of cleavage appeared, and the Canadian Associa- 
tions, wishing to join the World's Association as a 
national unit, withdrew from both their affiliations in 
the United States. The International Committee thus 
became The American Committee at its Milwaukee 
Convention in 1899. 

India was the first foreign land to realize the dream 
of an American woman secretary. Fifteen years be- 
fore the projection of any World's Association, 
branches had been started by English ladies in Poona 
and elsewhere and India was included in the Colonial 
division of the British National organization. When 
Dr. George F. Pentecost was holding evangelistic serv- 
ices in India in the early '90s the Honorables Emily 
and Gertrude Kinnaird were interested in the great 
numbers of girls gathered in the missions. The city 
of Calcutta was deeply stirred. A few girls of the 



184 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Indian community were beginning to ask for liberty 
and education under Christian and Brahma Somaj 
auspices; the Eurasian community was commencing 
to feel the need of some interdenominational link and 
of a common ground to meet on; girls from Great 
Britain coming to houses of business or as governesses 
needed a home, and the British residents needed some- 
thing to bring them in contact with the other communi- 
ties and to take the place of parish work and religious 
privileges previously enjoyed at home. The need of 
banding girls together was felt and it was believed 
that a Young Women's Christian Association could 
best effect this, hence an organization was formed in 
Calcutta in 1891 and Miss Emily Kinnaird, the mov- 
ing spirit, fostered its growth by her visits, her corre- 
spondence, the editing of a monthly sheet and by her 
unforgetting and unforgettable interest. The Madras 
Association arose in almost identical fashion. 

English women came out as early as 1893 as for- 
eign secretaries. These were all voluntary workers 
and were termed either honorary secretary or presi- 
dent, as the case might be ; but the fame of American 
secretaries, truly trained and professional officers, had 
reached both England and India. Miss Kinnaird was 
at home in London on the occasion of the Jubilee 
World's Convention of the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation in 1894 and so concerned for a secretary for 
Madras that she called together a group of Americans 
acquainted with India to discuss the possibility of ca- 
bling for one of their trained secretaries. After a time 
of prayer Mr. Bierce of Dayton, Ohio, arose and said : 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 185 

**My niece Agnes is the girl for it." Mrs. David Mc- 
Conaughy of Madras was present, about to leave for 
America, and was commissioned to consult Miss Morse, 
American member of the World's Committee, and 
urge the claims of Madras. 

This was the outcome. Agnes Gale Hill, then gen- 
eral secretary of the Toledo Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association, had entered into communication with 
her church board in relation to an appointment to 
China but nothing had been settled. Miss Morse gave 
her the call from Madras. Toledo volunteered financial 
support, for the World's Committee was not as yet 
fully enough organized to finance any undertaking. 
Miss Hill spent the early fall of 1894 visiting colleges 
and state conventions under the Student Volunteer 
Movement, sailed later in the year and by February, 
1895, was safely in Madras, the pioneer of the Ameri- 
can foreign department. These were the words of 
her acceptance: ''In college I gave myself to God 
for Association service ; in the Association I gave my- 
self to God for foreign service; in the call of the 
Madras Association I recognize a combination of these 
two calls and I give myself willingly." 

She found Madras counting at this time, the date 
of its third anniversary, three hundred and twenty- 
five members, English, Eurasian and Tamil. There 
was no headquarters, nor any means of communication 
between the five places where the five small branches 
met, except the warm and primitive method of walk- 
ing. In all the branches there were Bible classes and 
sewing circles and shortly afterwards some physical 



186 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

and social features were introduced which this good 
tennis player and ingenious social entertainer knew 
well how to handle. Her vacation weeks were spent 
at three of the hill station branches, because there was, 
of course, no traveling secretary; and this newly ar- 
rived American had much to give in Bible exposition 
and spiritual teaching by way of refreshing these 
struggling little Associations, as well as in advice upon 
ways and means which would differ almost as much 
from those in Madras, as her career as general secre- 
tary in Toledo had differed from that as Association 
president at the University of Illinois. 

This combination, or rather the impossibility of con- 
tinuing such a combination, led her to ask in one of 
her first letters for reinforcements. Her colleagues 
were all honorary British workers. She felt that 
there might be such in America. *'God only knows. 
Perhaps He is turning the heart of some qualified 
young woman to come out and help me." And the 
first recruit was her own sister Mary. 

One of the charter members of the International 
Committee of Young Men 's Christian Associations, Mr. 
James Stokes, making a world tour in 1896, wrote 
home: ''I expect to spend the month of October in 
China, reaching India via Burmah about December 
first to fifteenth, and we shall probably go direct from 
Burmah to Calcutta." But plans were changed and 
late one afternoon Mr. Stokes and his sisters entered 
the port of Madras instead. Mr. McConaughy, the 
American secretary of the Men's Association, came on 
board and escorted them to a missionary conference 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 187 

attended by fifty or sixty missionaries, among them 
Mary B. Hill, who had arrived a few weeks before. 
Mr. Stokes knew that the World's Executive Commit- 
tee had conferred with Miss Morse about Agnes Hill 
becoming national secretary for India. "With Mr. 
Stokes the future and the present were synonymous. 
The Young Men's Conference in Calcutta to which he 
and Mr. and Mrs. McConaughy were bound would 
also be attended by many ladies connected with the 
English-formed Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion branches. He conceived the idea of calling a 
women's conference at the same time, and invited 
Agnes Hill to go on with the party, since an extra 
cabin had been providentially put at his disposal that 
day. A British account of the founding of the India 
National Association mentions Mr. Stokes as "acting 
with the promptitude of an American." 

Miss Hill also accepted with the promptitude of an 
American and the morning after the arrival of Mr. 
Stokes they were all outward bound for Calcutta. 
The organization was launched and officered. An of- 
fice was set aside in the Calcutta building. Agnes 
Hill was called as National Secretary and sent on to 
London for a little breathing time between the ex- 
hausting local experience in Madras and the still 
more exhausting labors ahead in her parish of India, 
Burmah and Ceylon, 1,681,506 square miles and a 
population of 297,562,876 souls, Brahmanists, Budd- 
hists, Sikhs, Jains, Zoroastrians, Jews, Mohammedans, 
Roman and Protestant Christians and adherents of 
still other faiths. 



188 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

In the year 1899, when the International Committee 
changed its name to The American Committee of the 
Young Women's Christian Associations in order to re- 
strict its efforts to the United States alone, Miss Morse, 
Miss Reynolds and Miss Rouse were all present at the 
Biennial Convention, speaking of the relation of this 
American membership to young women in other lands, 
and a foreign department was created, which, owing 
to Miss Morse's residence in New York City, was to 
work from the East, rather than from the Chicago 
headquarters. Up to that time she had been in her- 
self the whole foreign department, but now she was 
to associate other ladies with her to help in securing 
and equipping and maintaining American secretaries 
whom the World's Association would appoint to the 
various foreign fields. Miss Morse's own best remem- 
bered presentation was at the Nashville Convention 
of 1901 when she closed an address crammed with in- 
formation, with this inquiry : 

"But you say we are already sending out missionaries to 
the heathen world. Why should we send the Association? 
If our Association fills a place of need here as a part of 
church work which cannot be done within church walls, if 
it is needed to develop a Christian womanhood in this 
Christian land, to convict nominal Christian women and 
awaken them to their responsibility for their sisters here, 
what shall we say of the need for the women in India and 
China? Is there less need of the Association work for 
them? 

She had in her hand that day the document signed 
by women of every influential class in the city of 
Shanghai, begging The American Committee to open 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 189 

an Association there. Miss Morse was not present at 
the Wilkes-Barre Convention of 1903 — it was not long 
before she laid down all her duties and rested forever 
from her labors — but her successor introduced Martha 
Berninger, who had accepted this call to China, and 
Alice Newell, who was to reinforce the little group of 
American secretaries in India. By 1906 there were 
ten Americans serving in India, China and Japan and 
a candidate ready for South America. Miss Morsels 
memorial stands in Lahore, India, where Morse Hall 
houses a good general work, a fine educational depart- 
ment and an ample dormitory. 

While the International Committee was thus taking 
its part in extending the Young Women's Christian 
Association work in the outer circle, the home expan- 
sion was also going forward. The pioneer period was 
passing and the era of specialization had set in. This 
was noticeable in every way, particularly in the acces- 
sion of staff members, the opening of additional sum- 
mer conferences, and the training of employed of- 
ficers. 

At the time of Miss Tarr's retirement in November, 
1892, Effie It. Price of the faculty of Northwestern 
Academy succeeded her as general secretary. This 
was January first of that *' World's Fair Year," as 
1893 has always been called by all the people in any 
way affected by the World's Columbian Exposition in 
Chicago. The office had been provided for, and the 
editorial work on *'The Evangel/^ which had suc- 
ceeded ^^The Quarterly ^^ in 1889, had been carried by 
Elizabeth Wilson in addition to her traveling duties, 



190 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

but the local Association wanted more expert help 
than these general workers could afford. After a little 
Florence Simms was called from DePauw University 
as college secretary and Harriet Taylor from the state 
secretaryship of New York as city secretary. Miss 
Taylor was enthusiastic and constructive in all the 
city problems, but her training and experience as a 
teacher gleamed through the new profession she had 
chosen and the class work of the city Associations 
broadened into a true educational system. In 1901 
the progress of local Associations undertaking ex- 
tension into industrial centers was so marked that 
Helen F. Barnes, state secretary for Michigan and 
Ohio, was called as a specialist in this field. Mary S. 
Dunn's work among the city Associations had con- 
vinced her that the revenue producing departments in 
cities were capable of a great improvement and her 
duties were so rearranged as to give her the title of 
economic secretary. Esther L. Anderson as general 
secretary of Detroit had so thoroughly interwoven all 
the sections of the Association with the religious 
activities that she was called as religious work secre- 
tary. Emma Hays was chiefly occupied aiding state 
secretaries in communities desiring local organization. 
In the student department lines were not so closely 
drawn. Besides visitation, conference preparation was 
insistent in its demand upon the student staff, con- 
sisting after 1889, of Bertha Conde, Ruth Paxson, 
Frances Bridges, Margaret Kyle and others from time 
to time. 

Ever since the summer of 1892, when the main prin- 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 191 

ciples of the summer conferences were crystallized, 
local and state workers had been valuing them for 
what they could do for young women through the 
Association channels, but there were many others both 
in and out of the organized movement who craved at- 
tendance for the inspiration to their own Christian 
lives and the equipment for better Christian service 
in any sphere. After the men's student conference, 
which was organized at Mt. Hermon in 1886, had been 
increasing in power for each of its seven years, its 
program and spirit appealed so strongly to the young 
women who spent their summers in the village of East 
Northfield that a number of them petitioned Mr. 
Moody to open a similar conference for young women. 
Entirely in sympathy with the purpose, but unable 
to give the matter his personal attention because he 
was to be engaged almost entirely in the great World 's 
Fair Evangelistic Campaigns through the season, he 
invited the conference to the Northfield Seminary 
grounds and put all arrangements into the hands of 
the International Committee of the Young "Women's 
Christian Associations. Mrs. A. J. Gordon was se- 
lected as presiding officer until his arrival. The an- 
nouncement, supplemented by visits to the Eastern 
colleges by Miss Price, the leader of the conference, 
resulted in an attendance of one hundred and eighty- 
one, who found a program of Bible Training Class, 
inductive Bible class. Christian Life Work hour, 
simultaneous college and city conferences, with an 
afternoon of recreation and the never forgotten 
Round Top twilight meeting, and the platform ad- 



192 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

dresses by Miss Dodge, Mrs. W. S. Bainbridge and 
other appealing speakers. A summary may be found 
in the letter of a Wellesley girl: ''It may not be 
said that one feature was helpful and another not — 
all were helpful, but some by their very nature were 
destined to exert a greater influence than others. 
The interchange of views and suggestions in regard to 
methods and means of Christian life were of untold 
value. ' ' 

So true and wholesome was the Christian influence 
exerted by this conference, that when its growth 
pointed to reorganization many Association members 
could hardly conceive of any change as endurable or 
of a conference at all apart from the place where it 
was born. But specialization was again in order and 
by removing to Silver Bay on Lake George students 
and city delegates could each have a conference de- 
vised and executed to meet their specific needs. Then 
the crowded Lake Geneva Conference was divided 
on the same principle. The romantic story of the 
founding of the Pacific Coast Conference, the swift 
development of Association interests in the Southern 
Atlantic and eastern gulf states through the medium 
of the Southern Conferences, these are definitely be- 
yond the limits of the present available space. In- 
finitely beyond any written record are the spiritual 
histories of the thousands and thousands of young 
women who made their way to these summer confer- 
ences and in them found, as a frequent conference 
speaker had said, **the entrance to the Christian life 
or a new devotion to Christian tastes and Christian 



THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 193 

service, habits of Bible study, interest in missions, a 
straightforward sense of duty, new conceptions of 
prayer, and deeper love for Christ as personal Lord.'^ 

Every new organization and department made a call 
for more employed officers. Every conference made a 
call for qualified women to take up what has for more 
than twenty years been termed **a new profession for 
women." The Summer Bible and Training School 
had become a lay women's conference; an "Inter- 
national Association School" board of trustees which 
was secured by the International Committee, but not 
organized as an integral part of its work, had estab- 
lished a branch as training ground, and finally con- 
fined its work to that branch, relinquishing the school 
features; direction of practical work in the Associa- 
tion settlement had ended in the supervising secretary 
carrying the local burdens, and the students becoming 
neighborhood, not Association, experts ; summer terms 
were too short for professional education, but too long 
for the strength of the students, chiefly young alumnae 
already taxed by their senior year in college or their 
first year of teaching. In each of these experiments 
some caught such a vision of Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association possibilities, that they were soon 
carrying large responsibilities, such as Clarissa H. 
Spencer, who succeeded Miss Reynolds as secretary of 
the World's Committee, Mabel Cratty, general secre- 
tary of The American Committee and later of the Na- 
tional Board, and A. Estelle Paddock and Frances 
Cross of the Foreign Department, all from the summer 
class of 1902. 



194 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Finally the Wilkes-Barre convention of 1903 in- 
structed The American Committee to undertake a 
permanent Institute under its own auspices. In Sep- 
tember a conclave deliberated upon the matter. The 
chief objections brought out were these. The com- 
mittee had no money for the purpose. There was no 
building. There was no suitable provision for prac- 
tice work. There was no available Bible teacher, nor 
could a full course of study be set up. Last of all, no 
students would come. The assets were as follows: 
The American Committee willing to make an attempt 
and a secretarial committee chairman, Mrs. Irwin 
Rew, devoted to the undertaking. A parlor confer- 
ence in Oak Park, just outside of Chicago, gave en- 
couragement as to funds, a suitable partly furnished 
house was leased, Bible instructors from the four 
theological seminaries of Chicago became available, 
the School of Civics and Philanthropy and the Chicago 
School of Physical Education were making their initial 
ventures that same season and gladly opened their 
classes to our students; factories and churches wel- 
comed noon and evening clubs among their girls and 
young women. 

The house was dedicated by an Extension Secre- 
taries ' Conference, December 29 to January 1, and the 
first term of the Institute proper opened January 2, 
1904. Seven students arrived sooner or later and 
were extremely loyal, reserving their criticism of the 
meager equipment until the day of their departure, 
when they politely suggested benefits which might ac- 
crue to their successors should certain improvements 




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THE AMERICAN COMMITTEE 195 

be made. As the course lasted only three months an- 
other group registered in the spring and a still larger 
group for the next fall. This humble beginning did 
not convince the Association public of the necessity 
for professional training and the life of the Institute 
hung in the balance. But in March of the third year, 
the house burned, the house, not the Institute — that 
had just begun to live. A special meeting of The 
American Committee was called and authorized Eliza- 
beth Wilson, who since her return to the committee in 
1900 had looked after secretarial matters, to obtain 
a furnished house to complete that year's classes and 
lease another property to accommodate the school the 
next fall. Mrs. Cyrus H. McCormick, Sr., started a 
refurnishing fund which other like-minded friends 
augmented, and when the fourth year opened at the 
new Ashland Boulevard address, with more than 
enough students to fill the house, the problem of 
whether anybody would attend such a school was also 
a little nearer its solution. 

The twenty years from 1886 to 1906 had immeasur- 
ably increased the vision of a national organization. 
It was not merely a body through which local members 
should be served with *' publications, correspondence, 
visitation and conventions," but a medium which 
should relate them with other nations bearing mutual 
obligations. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE INTERNATIONAL BOARD OF WOMEN 'S AND YOUNG 
WOMEN ^S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 



T 



'^^ I ^0 everything there is a season and a time 
to every purpose under the heavens. ' ' 
This was the opening sentence of a 
paper on ''Growth and Perpetuity Necessary to Con- 
ference Work," which Mrs. C. R. Springer, President 
of the Women's Christian Association of Saint Louis, 
read at the Eleventh International Conference, which 
met in Chicago in 1891. The argument which she ad- 
vanced was that while many individual Associations 
had seen wonderful increase, the Conference as a whole 
might have been benefited by a centralization of power 
which could bridge the distance between conventions. 
The Conference would retain its deliberative functions, 
but be legislative as well, and the central cabinet 
would be able to act decisively upon questions that 
might arise requiring prompt action if the progress 
and development of the whole Conference were to be 
ensured. The hearty reception of Mrs. Springer's 
paper showed that other representative women had 
been thinking in the same direction, and after much 
prayer and deliberation a new constitution was made 
operative and became the basis of incorporation. This 

196 



THE INTERNATIONAL BOARD 197 

called for an organization to be known as The Inter- 
national Board of Women's Christian Associations, its 
object, to unite in one central body present and future 
Women's Christian Associations, these and kindred 
Associations to be admitted to membership by election 
of the Board in session. There should be an executive 
committee elected by the Conference, which now be- 
came the regular biennial meeting of the Board, this 
committee to consist of the full quota of officers, in- 
cluding one vice-president for each state, and from 
the British provinces or other countries entering into 
international relations. The bylaws provided for 
membership assessment to meet the expenses of the 
general work. It was not strange that the Conference, 
appreciating the grasp Mrs. Springer had of the whole 
scheme of international organization and knowing her 
success in relating the many ramifications of the com- 
plex St. Louis Association, should have elected her 
president of the Board, at both this and the succeed- 
ing Conference. Her alertness, prodigious faith, and 
her joy in accomplishment had been proved again and 
again through the conference days of previous years, 
as she had been a regular attendant since 1877. 

Another important resolution adopted at this time 
was to the effect that all organizations forming after 
this time should take the name of Young Women's 
Christian Association, and those already existing might 
change to Young Women's Christian Association at 
their option. This was following the example of 
Chicago, w^hich had been a Young Women's Christian 
Association since 1887, although the other Associa- 



198 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

tions from New York State west to the California 
boundary still kept the title, Women's Christian As- 
sociation. But it was felt that the purpose of the two, 
''to promote the spiritual, mental and physical inter- 
ests of women, together with other Christian work," 
were identical, hence the resolution. Its natural out- 
come was the amendment of the constitution at the 
next meeting to include these new titles, reading 
'^'The International Board of Women's and Young 
Women's Christian Associations." 

Two distinguished guests of the Chicago Conference 
of 1891 were Mrs. Potter Palmer, President of the 
Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbian 
Exposition, and Mrs. Charles Henrotin, Yice-president 
for the Woman's Branch of the Auxiliary for the 
World's Congresses of 1893, which formed an impor- 
tant part in the Exposition. Mrs. Palmer spoke par- 
ticularly of the Woman's Building in which exhibits 
of women's work of all kinds were to be collected and 
displayed, and urgently asked for an exhibit from the 
Associations in the International Conference, that the 
Exposition, which would in any case be an important 
moment for women, might become an inspired one 
for the sex. Mrs. Henrotin spoke of this counciling of 
the nations as a comparatively new factor in the 
slow progress of fraternity, and requested that the 
Women's Christian Association be included in the list 
of Congresses endeavoring to unite all people in the 
common cause of the perfection and advancement of 
humanity. Both invitations were accepted. 

All visitors to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago 



THE INTERNATIONAL BOARD 199 

remember the Woman's Building near the Fifty-Sev- 
enth Street entrance to Jackson Park. It stood white 
and glistening like its neighbors, like them a surprise 
to matter of fact people who had not realized that 
apparently solid marble buildings could spring up for 
one brief season of unreckoned beauty, and then dis- 
appear like the flowers of one summer. Unlike its 
neighbors this white plaster building, while classical 
and old world in its exterior, was within entirely novel 
and almost revolutionary. Everything was made by 
woman's hands, wrought by woman's mind, or called 
into action by woman's will. Across a whole end of 
the second story extended a great Organization Room, 
in which there was found a place for women's organ- 
izations, religious, philanthropic and educational in 
character, corresponding in fact to all women's inter- 
ests where cooperation had set in. At the end of the 
main aisle, the observed of all observers, was a wall 
space covered with decorative shields bearing in rich 
lettering the name and date of organization of the sev- 
eral Associations affiliated with the International 
Board. This was supplemented in the booth below 
by charts and photographs and yearbooks, which were 
shown and explained to visitors by ladies who had 
volunteered for that purpose. No labor nor personal 
expense had been spared by the president of the board 
in making this a success. 

Naturally the presence of so many leaders at the con- 
gresses and upon the Fair grounds through the season 
of 1893 brought very close to their hearts the question 
of protecting young girls attending such fairs as visi- 



200 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

tors, or employed upon the grounds in connection with 
the exhibits, and with the amusement and restaurant 
concessions. While no other of the large expositions 
since then erected a Woman's Building which called 
for so elaborate an exhibit as in Chicago, j^et at Buf- 
falo, 1901, Paris, France, 1900, St. Louis, 1904, and 
Portland, Oregon, 1905, there were opportunities for 
advertising certain Association features of help to 
young women and for undertaking Travelers* Aid 
work either in connection with that department in the 
local city where the exposition was held or in conjunc- 
tion with other movements concerned for the welfare 
of young women. 

International cooperation had been gained through 
the appointment of an American correspondent of 
Travelers' Aid to the World's Travelers' Aid Society. 
Her report and that of a special committee on a plan 
of organization provided perhaps the chief topic of 
consideration for the St. Louis Conference of 1903. 
The sense of the meeting was expressed by resolutions 
which were left to the council to execute. 

The work naturally divides itself into two parts — the 
agent, and those who are to help the traveler at the com- 
mencement of her Journey. 

First, with regard to the first part, helping the agent, 
we suggest that there be a directory, for the use of the 
agent, of all Associations in the United States that would 
be willing to look after a girl if communicated with. 

Second, that every Association should pledge itself never 
to turn away a girl on any condition or under any circum- 
stances. 

Third, when only a few trains or boats can be reached 
or met, preference be given to local trains, as girla in near- 



THE INTERNATIONAL BOARD 201 

by towns more frequently come into the cities for work or 
are led to leave home by advertisements in papers. 

Fourth, that we make in the near future Travelers' Aid 
work a special feature of our Board and urge every single 
Association to have a Travelers' Aid department. 

Fifth, urge that every Association have a director whose 
sole business it will be to act as Travelers' Aid director. 

Sixth, such director, every Aid agent, and all girls known 
to be about to travel, be provided with a badge, imiform 
in color, shape and size. 

On the second point, those who are to help the traveler 
at the commencement of her journey, we suggest: 

First, that each Association pledge itself to assume a 
certain district to investigate as to where we can place a 
voluntary worker. 

Second, that we secure helpful literature and disseminate 
it with careful attention and economy. This literature 
should comprise: 

a. Specific instruction to the volunteer worker; and 

b. Specific information to the public; both prepared by 

a committee of the Board. 

This literature could be distributed through the many 
church societies and home missionary societies. 

Third, that there should be large hangers in every 
depot and steamer and in every available place. 

During the Travelers' Aid campaign in connection 
with the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, 278,- 
000 leaflets, circulars, placards, and cards were printed 
and distributed through auxiliaries and individuals 
from Canada to the Gulf and from ocean to ocean; 
7,820 letters were received and answered or sent from 
headquarters in New York and St. Louis. At the 
St. Louis headquarters, 2,988 persons were directed 
to provide homes for lodging. Eight hundred and 
sixty-six persons from all quarters of the globe were 
lodged from one to ten days, of whom 397 were en- 
tirely alone and 200 were without money. 



202 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

With such a background for an incentive to large 
effort, the International Board entered into the forma- 
tion of an Exposition Travelers' Aid Committee for 
the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition (Portland, 
Oregon, 1905) in which The American Committeee, the 
Girls' Friendly Society of America, the National 
Council of Jewish Women, the International Order of 
the King's Daughters and Sons, the Women's Aux- 
iliary of the American Bible Society, and the Inter- 
national Sunshine Society, actively cooperated. In 
Portland also there had been constituted a Travelers' 
Aid Association of eleven groups of women accustomed 
to forward civic and religious enterprises. 

Mrs. William S. Stewart, of Philadelphia, was chair- 
man of the whole matter, and the Lewis and Clark 
Exposition, though a smaller fair than that at St. 
Louis the preceding year, showed an appalling need 
for the protective work carried on, and proved to the 
International Board Conference that cooperative 
Travelers' Aid work is needed in this country, and 
that every Young Women's Christian Association 
should share by appointing Travelers' Aid matrons to 
give protection and information wherever many are 
traveling by land or water. The 1905 Conference 
specified this as the department upon which attention 
should be concentrated. 

The International Board also emphasized work at 
large summer assemblies. 

Owing to the importance of Chautauqua Lake, New 
York, as a gathering place for people alive to every re- 
ligious and philanthropic work, it was decided to open 



THE INTERNATIONAL BOARD 203 

there each season a room as headquarters, which would 
be presided over by a hostess conversant with Associa- 
tion progress and methods. This was most happily 
carried on from 1901 through several summers. In 
1902 over 500 guests registered. In 1904 Dr. Anna 
L. Brown, General Secretary of the International 
Board, kept open house here while doing preliminary 
work for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Travelers^ 
Aid Campaign, and she and others accepted invita- 
tions to speak before the Chautauqua Woman's Club, 
that audience composed of members from every state 
of this Union, each sorting over from the daily pro- 
grams those things which she will weave into her next 
year's web in her own home club. It is an audience 
invaluable to any such propaganda as that of the Co- 
operative Travelers' Aid. 

Some kinds of Christian duty one performs with 
faithfulness, some with delight. This seems to have 
been the spirit animating everyone who had a hand 
in the unique work at Monteagle. Here in a mountain 
plateau of Tennessee, the Southern Chautauqua had 
assembled upon its grounds, buildings for a summer 
colony of thousands of people from all parts of the 
South. Headquarters of the International Board 
were established in a large house where young women 
resided much as in a city boarding home. There were 
anniversary days and inspiring meetings. But on 
the outside of this walled city, the mountain boys and 
girls were without the advantages which the ladies on 
the grounds believed could be theirs by a little effort. 
First a library was started, then a training school of 



] 



204 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

household arts — the Louise Cecile School was opened 
February, 1905 — then a Young Women's Christian 
Association came into being, directing the local work, 
and passing on further up the mountains the reading 
matter which had been first used in their attractive 
and popular library. It is not strange that the 
Women's and Young Women's Christian Associations 
in that whole region found inspiration in their com- 
ings together at Monteagle. 

But the real history of the International Board and 
of the Associations through which it touched the life 
of young womanhood in the great American cities is 
told better by its periodicals. First the local papers 
were circulated: The Earnest Worker , published in 
Cleveland from June, 1874, on ; Faith and WorhSj the 
Philadelphia paper which started in September, 1875 ; 
The Christian Worker, which Utica began to publish 
the very same month ; and The Gleaner, of Memphis, 
dating from 1883; all these contained news of their 
own and other Associations, with original and selected 
readings. In April, 1894, there was launched The 
International Messenger as the official publication of 
the International Board's affiliated Associations. Its 
twelve large pages were filled with editorials by Mrs. 
Fanny Cassiday Duncan, whose office of secretary was 
enlarged to cover this function also, quotations from 
the last Conference journal, articles of general value, 
reports from cities and from the various state chair- 
men, and discussions on Association problems. In suc- 
ceeding months there were fine historical accounts of 
flourishing local organizations, and occasionally a sym- 



THE INTERNATIONAL BOARD 205 

posium upon Summer Homes or other equally at- 
tractive themes. For the Conference papers, which 
once had been found in the Conference Journal, one 
was now referred to The Messenger, For eight years 
it lived a useful life, and was then succeeded by The 
Bulletin, which condensed the Association news and 
omitted the general and descriptive reading which had 
bulked largely in the former organ. 



' 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE JOINT COMMITTEE PREPARING THE WAT FOR ONE 
NATIONAL MOVEMENT 

ANY chronicle of the first half century span of 
the life of the Young Women's Christian 
Associations in this country might well be 
called Two Score Years and Ten ; forty years of spor- 
adic local organisms and separate international groups, 
from 1866 to 1906 ; and ten years of one truly national 
Young Women's Christian Association of the United 
States of America, from 1906 to 1916. 

The person in America who knew girls and women 
best was Miss Grace H. Dodge of New York City. 
These friends were at first her own circle in the city, 
her school mates at Farmington, Connecticut, her 
neighbors and friends at Greyston, Riverdale. What 
was a suburb of the city in her girlhood days is now 
legally within the limits of the city, although the 
green sweep of lawn at Greyston, fringed by trees 
and shrubs, is not broken by sight of any human 
habitation, but seems completed by the shining Hud- 
son River, where the vista is bounded only by the 
stately Palisades that form the western bank. Her 
summers at Greyston and her steady deep attachment 
to the place, led to starting a lending library which 

206 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 207 

found shelf room in her father's greenhouse, and a 
sewing school which met in her own home until a house 
was built for the two enterprises which immediately 
made their way and became part of a large neighbor- 
hood association. 

Education, cooperation, protection, were the key- 
words of the work which seemed waiting for her in 
her other home town, the great city of New York. In 
January, 1880, she helped form the Kitchen Garden 
Association, to extend that combination of correct 
housekeeping instruction and songs and games, which 
had first been thought out by Miss Emily Huntington, 
and put into operation in the Wilson Industrial School 
in 1876. As corresponding secretary Miss Dodge set 
herself to creating public sentiment for industrial 
training as an educational factor. After four years 
the Kitchen Garden Association made way for the In- 
dustrial Education Association with a greatly ex- 
tended scope, including committees on Household In- 
dustries, Industrial Art, Mechanical Industries, Out- 
side Organizations, Vacation Schools, Kindergartens, 
Industries for the Insane, Keformatories, Orphanages 
and Asylums, Houses and Training for Domestic 
Science, and Bureau for Teachers. Cooking schools 
were known, but no foundation existed for industrial 
training, even Pratt Institute began some two years 
later. The Association engaged teachers for classes 
both within and without the building leased for head- 
quarters, at number 9 University Place. These out- 
side classes were not only metropolitan; they assem- 
bled in nearby Yonkers, Dobbs Ferry, Hoboken and 



208 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

on Staten Island, in Ogontz Seminary near Philadel- 
phia, and in far off Rochester and Cleveland. 

There were not enough adequately trained teachers 
to meet the demand, and as the Board of Trustees un- 
dertook normal classes, they saw that this feature 
must assume collegiate proportions. Thoughtful edu- 
cators became interested. Upon the founders was laid 
a heavy financial burden, the task of securing build- 
ings, accumulating endowment and meeting deficits 
when endowment funds and students' fees together 
were insufficient for the annual budget. Miss Dodge 
as vice-president and treasurer was more than a de- 
cider of policies and a disburser of monies put into 
her hands. She made call after call, telling people 
what such a teachers' college would mean, why it was 
necessary, inspiring some with her own vision and get- 
ting help for the mission to which she was devoted, 
often meeting failure, but plodding on with equal 
stoutness of heart in any case. People began to see 
the value of academic and graduate instruction in 
Household Arts, in Physical Education, and various 
technical subjects. They saw what the study of edu- 
cation from the kindergarten up to university ad- 
ministration was accomplishing for the nation, and 
gifts began to come more easily. In 1911 she dared to 
give up the treasury, although she always remained 
on the board of trustees of Teacher's College. 

The ability she showed in the promotion of in- 
dustrial education could not fail to be coveted for the 
whole school system of the city. When Mayor Grace 
appointed women to the Board of Education for the 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 209 

first time, one of the two was Miss Dodge, and she 
served the full term of three years, January 1, 1888, 
to 1891. This new commissioner took so seriously her 
duties as member of committees on the care of school 
buildings, on sites for new schools, on school furniture, 
as to cause surprise on the part of those who had not 
known such keen examination of present conditions 
and such unerring judgment as to the future. After 
two years the Board was ready to introduce industrial 
training as a result of her labors, and the conduct of 
evening schools was a still further scene of her inter- 
est. 

Perhaps Miss Dodge 's greatest service on the Board 
was as a member of a committee of eight, appointed to 
investigate and report what changes ought to be made 
in the by-laws relating to examinations and marks, 
also changes desirable in the methods of examinations, 
course of study, the methods and system of marking 
both teachers and pupils, the cause and remedy for 
the excess of pupils who are unable to obtain admission 
to the colleges, ^^also in respect to all other matters in 
relation to the school system which they may deem 
proper.^' Earnest, persevering investigation began 
at once. The committee held seventeen meetings 
and heard a great mass of testimony from the city 
superintendent, his assistants, and a number of princi- 
pals, vice-principals and teachers. Communications 
were sent to the educational departments of all large 
and important cities in the United States, asking for 
full and detailed information as to their respective 
school systems and the methods of supervising and 



210 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

controlling them. A good share of this correspondence 
fell upon Miss Dodge. In June the final report was 
presented in a carefully prepared course of study for 
both primary and grammar grades. Kindergarten 
there was none at the time. The committee also re- 
ported on an amendment to the by-laws relative to a 
maximum salary for teachers of all grades. 

It is difficult to characterize Miss Dodge's part in this 
work, except to say that she was the leading spirit. She 
had spent the previous summer in England and on the 
Continent studying the practical application of school sys- 
tems, consulting the leaders of educational thought and 
visiting schools, colleges and universities. She brought to 
the work of preparing a course of study for the city's 
public schools an exalted sense of what could and should be 
done. She felt that training young people in industrial 
education pointed to the solution of some of the outstand- 
ing social problems, touched the very roots of our civiliza- 
tion, and affected the prosperity of our nation for future 
generations. The course of study at that time adopted by 
the Board of Education contained some of the advanced 
methods for which she had enthusiastically labored, and 
more have been added since. 

All this educational investigation was later at the 
service of the mission schools when Miss Dodge was 
appointed a member of the Educational Commission 
for the Ecumenical Missionary Conference, which she 
attended in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1910. Another 
service to be mentioned in connection with school 
matters is the organization of the Girls ^ Public School 
Athletic League in 1905. 

If her heart was in the educational propaganda, her 
very heart and soul were in that first-hand contact 
with girls, which has come to be known as "Girls* 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 211 

Self-Governing Clubs/' but which she simply called 
** Cooperation. " One evening she met with a few 
self-supporting girls in the home of one of them, talk- 
ing over with them some of the common questions of 
life. The group grew in membership and rooms for 
meeting followed; for those who wanted better per- 
sonal equipment for the years ahead there was a 
chance to study ; they had good times together. Miss 
Dodge brought in her own friends to teach what they 
knew and to share in what she was herself enjoying. 
Tip to 1883 when this Irene Club came into being, peo- 
ple had been stirred to do much for, but had not 
thought of doing much with the rank and file of self- 
supporting young women. To her each girl was an 
individual, even though many worked together or 
played together in companies. *'How can we co- 
operate," she said, *' before we know how to honor 
and appreciate those busy women and girls into whose 
lives we want to bring brightness and cheer. As long 
as we look upon them as a class whom we are to bene- 
fit and uplift, there can be no cooperation. We must 
learn to know their grand self-sacrificing lives, must 
make them friends from whom we are to receive more 
than we can ever give, and then must gain their in- 
terest and consent to the cooperative measure hoped 
for." 

All members were on equal terms, the cash girl earn- 
ing two dollars per week, the teacher earning ten times 
that sum, and the so-called girl of leisure, who had 
received her wages in advance. Business was con- 
ducted through strictly Parliamentary methods ; com- 



212 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

mittees and a council made easy the execution of the 
measures voted by the club in the monthly meetings, 
when three hundred members would sit through an 
evening of pure business discussion, because it was 
their own affairs which they themselves were handling. 

Besides the business and the classes and the social 
hours, many inside organizations developed : the Lend- 
a-Hand, or Resolve Committees, which found ways to 
comfort unfortunate or friendless people : the Junior 
Branches, which swarmed the younger fun-loving chil- 
dren and hived them in the rooms on certain evenings 
in the week with two or three queen bees to keep them 
out of mischief. Then grew up the * ' Three P. Circle, ' ' 
with the motto words, *' Purity, Perseverance, Pleas- 
antness, * ' from a talk of five club members going home 
from the club together. These were active workers 
and cooperating members striving together to develop 
a more earnest type of womanhood among the girls 
they knew. And when the older members married, 
and could not come out at night to the club meetings, 
the question was asked, *'Why not have a Bride, Wife, 
Mother, Branch and come to the rooms in the after- 
noons?" The Domestic Circle was the result, and 
practical talks, lectures and demonstration classes 
shared the time with the precious social intercourse, 
while a committee from the main club, of unmarried 
members out of work, cared for the babies and young 
children. 

Combinations for summer vacations led to the holi- 
day houses; combinations for emergencies led to the 
Mutual Benefit Fund to provide for sickness and fu- 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 213 

neral expenses. Combinations to find places for those 
out of work or to suggest fitting for better positions 
led to the Alliance Employment Bureau. Miss Dodge 
was repeatedly asked to tell others about her club 
work and answer questions, as for example : 

Question — "Do you have any trouble with class distinc- 
tion of one trade with another?" 

Answer — ^"It might be a difficulty elsewhere, but not in 
New York." 

Question — ^"How do you begin to get acquainted?" 
Answer — "Wait for an introduction through some mutual 
friend. Our club work is not different from any other 
social life; we meet on feelings of social equality, the same 
as other friends." 

Question — "How intimate are you with your girls?" 
Answer — "We are very intimate. They are with my life 
and I am with theirs." 

The club idea made possible the whole oncoming 
rush of settlements and institutional churches, the in- 
dustrial, educational and junior departments in both 
Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tions. People wanted to get together, wanted to work 
together. They did not know how until Miss Dodge 
showed them what could be done in a club where lead- 
ers were actively humble and members were honor- 
ably ambitious. There would always be outstanding 
leaders, for equality of rights need not be confused 
with equality of gifts. 

These Irene Club members wanted to hear Miss 
Dodge talk — always, in any audience, for that matter, 
the only regret was that soon she would have to stop 
— and suggested to her topics about which they were 
thinking and on which they needed her advice, Other 



214. FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

clubs wanted to read these words and the little volume 
**A Bundle of Letters to Busy Girls" was published 
in 1887 and new editions meet the steady calls for it 
after nearly thirty years. 

When the Honorable Seth Low, a former president 
of Columbia University, was elected mayor of greater 
New York, he appointed as his secretary Mr. James 
Bronson Reynolds, the former student secretary of 
certain continental universities. To these two aca- 
demic municipal officers came a rumor in 1902 that 
some of the employment bureaus licensed by the city 
were placing immigrant girls and other unprotected 
young women in immoral resorts. Mr. Reynolds, 
thinking that the Woman's Municipal League might 
be able to investigate the conduct of these bureaus, 
consulted with Miss Dodge as treasurer, but when 
she learned that absolute secrecy was essential till 
the inquiry was ended, she herself supplied the re- 
quired funds, rather than hazard the undertaking by 
presentation to any organized body for action. On 
the evidence thus obtained, two managers were sent 
to prison and about sixty others were legally blocked 
from this type of business. 

Miss Dodge had striven to build up in her club 
girls that inner wall of protection which every pure 
minded girl could attain. She had also thought much 
of how Christian society can build an outer wall of 
protection around those who are overwhelmed by the 
forces of iniquity preying upon girls ignorant of 
moral dangers, and unsuspecting of harm. 

She had full respect for the efforts of the local 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 215 

Women's and Young Women's Christian Association 
whose agents stood on guard in the docks and stations 
of a score of cities to greet and guide incoming girls, 
but she felt that all sporadic actions were only a drop 
in the bucket; there must be a union of all possible 
allies, and there must be other than station and fol- 
low-up work. Protection must be legal and legisla- 
tive, it must be international. 

This combination was first effected in New York 
City, for most of her undertakings * ' began in Jerusa- 
lem." A committee composed of Jewish, Roman 
Catholic and Protestant women began investigation 
which later led to an incorporated society and a di- 
rectorate of both men and women, but even at once 
there was an increased force of Travelers' Aid agents 
speaking many languages, and a reliable system of re- 
ports and records for tracing. 

Another part of this same conception of protection 
was the National Vigilance Committee, later merged 
into the American Social Hygiene Association. This 
committee, to whose working she gave the most dili- 
gent and scrupulous attention, was organized at her 
house in 1905. Later it was able to induce the United 
States government to ratify the White Slave Treaty 
drafted in Paris in 1902 and already accepted by the 
leading nations of Europe. Aid was also given in 
the passage of two national laws to prevent the im- 
portation of women from State to State for immoral 
purposes; state laws to the same end were passed in 
thirty-one States. These laws enabled the public au- 
thorities to overcome the difficulties which had previ- 



216 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

ously existed in prosecuting offenders who had es- 
caped from the State when an offence was committed. 
Most of the steps in this war for the suppression of 
commercialized vice bore other people's names, as that 
of the representative who fathered a bill through the 
house, for Miss Dodge had an instinct for remaining 
unknown as the author of any deed, whether it be a 
benefaction of time, of advice or of money. 

All this work of education, cooperation and protec- 
tion was done with the deepest Christian purpose. 
Miss Dodge was continually seeking the Kingdom of 
God and His righteousness, and these many things 
that made up the days' work and the years' work 
were means to the coming of that Kingdom. Her per- 
sonal conceptions of Christianity were as high as her 
social conceptions. Her morning hour of Bible read- 
ing and deliberate prayer, her holy observance of the 
Lord's day for divine worship and rest and gladness, 
were the sources of her gigantic achievement. Peo- 
ple knew her as a Christian woman, fond of girls — 
one who was accustomed to work decently and in order 
with other people. She believed in '* freedom guarded 
by organization," People wondered that she was not 
identified with the Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation either nationally or locally. She had been 
helpful to all. She had read papers at the Interna- 
tional Conferences in Cincinnati in 1885, and in Chi- 
cago in 1891 when the International Board was 
formed. She had spoken at the first Northfield Con- 
ference. She had opened her house to a parlor con- 
ference in 1898, at which Miss Ruth Rouse had pre- 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 217 

sented tlie Christian opportunities in American col- 
leges and those in foreign lands looking to America, 
and had brought increased financial support to The 
American Committee. Her visit to the Baltimore As- 
sociation in 1887 resulted in a flourishing club which 
was the nucleus of a branch in the industrial part 
of the city. She spoke before college girls, presided 
at meetings, advised with leaders, stood by especial 
efforts for exposition travelers' aid, contributed lav- 
ishly, etc., but was never committed to any board or 
committee. Said one who knew her well, 

The reason was not hard to find. Her wide vision, clear 
judgment and broad sympathy could not be satisfied with 
a divided leadership. The work demanded the largest spirit 
of love and liberty, and until an organization could be 
effected which could work unhampered by friction for all 
the young women of the nation in a definite progressive 
advance toward the highest and best in all things, she was 
unwilling to give her time and thought to any lower 
standard. 

She had often said in confidence to those nearest 
to her in both organizations that if the time should 
ever come when union was deeply desired on both 
sides, she stood ready to help. 

To Miss Dodge, as a matter of course, the officers 
of both The American Committee and International 
Board turned in the spring of 1905 when local city 
affairs became national complications. In Washing- 
ton, D. C, young women in business and professional 
life wished to establish a Young Women's Christian 
Association with the equipment and program for pro- 
moting the spiritual, mental, social and physical wel- 



218 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

fare of young women that were found in other cities, 
and asked The American Committee to help them to 
complete their plans. The Women's Christian As- 
sociation, which had for thirty-five years maintained 
a boarding home for women, and carried on other 
lines of work such as were previously common to many 
of its sister Associations in the International Board, 
desired that the new work be undertaken under a title 
other than Young Women's Christian Association, 
which was so similar to its own that the public might 
not be able to make distinctions. But the words 
Young Women's Christian Association with their uni- 
versally accepted significance, seemed to the younger 
body the only title that would indicate the nature and 
affiliations of their society to the cosmopolitan resi- 
dents and guests of the capital city, and they felt that 
the prefix "Young" distinguished it from the other 
name. Representatives of the proposed new organ- 
ization had sought the advice of The American Com- 
mittee when they were assembled in Detroit that 
April for their tenth Biennial Convention. At the 
same time members of the International Board 's Com- 
mittee on Relations were in Washington at the re- 
quest of the Women's Christian Association Board 
and the State Director for the District of Columbia. 
A letter from Washington and a telegram from De- 
troit reached Miss Dodge at the same time. Each 
asked that she preside at a conference upon the mat- 
ters involved. In each she saw the desire for such 
mutual understanding and cooperation as might soon 
make possible a united Young Women's Christian As- 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 219 

sociation in the United States. She accepted both in- 
vitations and asked that representatives meet with 
her in New York City on May 24. 

Miss Dodge received her guests at the Hotel Man- 
hattan and each of the company of fifteen believed as 
she went in to the meeting place that God, who had 
been working His purpose out as month succeeded to 
year, had brought His purpose for the Young Wom- 
en's Christian Association to the place when its fu- 
ture would be enlarged or thwarted by her individual 
thought and action that morning. The representa- 
tives of the International Board were its president, 
Mrs. W, S. Buxton of Springfield, Massachusetts, two 
former presidents, Mrs. R. A. Dorman of New York 
City and Mrs. W. S. Stewart of Philadelphia, the 
president and treasurer of the Board of Trustees, Mrs. 
C. N, Judson of Brooklyn and Mrs. J. T. Whittlesey 
of Montclair, New Jersey, the State Director for the 
District of Columbia, Mrs. Frank T. Thurston of 
Washington, and the former general secretary, Dr. 
Anna L. Brown of Boston. The American Committee 
was represented by the president, Mrs. J. S. Griffith, 
and Mrs. J. J. Tufts, both from headquarters in Chi- 
cago, three non-resident members. Miss Helen Miller 
Gould, of New York City, Mrs. Robert E. Speer of 
Englewood, New Jersey, and Mrs. Thomas S. Glad- 
ding of Montclair, New Jersey, also chairman of the 
American Department of the World's Young Wom- 
en's Christian Association, and two members of its 
staff, Miss Emma Hays and Miss Elizabeth Wilson. 
No doubt all had seen Miss Dodge preside over large 



220 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

meetings, had heard her read papers and give ad- 
dresses, and many had come to decisions on impor- 
tant puzzling questions in personal conference with 
her, but no one was prepared for the directness with 
which the truly vital issue was singled out and the 
swiftness with which the meeting was brought to its 
desired haven. Before the opening prayers the chair- 
man read selected Scripture verses: 

"This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are 
behind, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high 
calling of God in Christ Jesus." 

"He led them forth by the right way." 

"The Lord shall guide them continually." 

"For this God is our God for ever and ever, and He will 
be our God even unto death." 

"Who teaeheth like Him?" 

"Be strong and of a good courage, be not afraid, neither 
be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee 
whithersoever thou goest," 

"The joy of the Lord is your strength." 

And after it she shared with the assembled friends 
her vision of the past twenty years, of the hundreds 
of thousands of young women in the country needing 
the help that could come when Christian women were 
banded together and could cover the country as a 
whole. Each president gave a summary of the posi- 
tion of her own organization as it faced the future, 
and then each woman present, as they sat in a great 
circle, answered Miss Dodge's question as to whether 
the time for union had come. *'I most earnestly de- 
sire this union." '*It has been my deep desire for 
years.'' '*I have come to-day believing that in God's 
providence the time has come." *'I hope this is the 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 221 

beginning of union. " ' * To my mind union means so 
much, that I do not see how as Christian women we 
can fail to unite.'' Thus around the room, then Miss 
Dodge spoke. *'I think we all agree; we want co- 
operation with union, not cooperation without union. 
Let us therefore vote now. Those in favor of this 
sentiment will kindly say ' aye. ' " A unanimous vote 
was taken. 

''The end of the exploration is the beginning of 
the enterprise.'' 

In answering Miss Dodge 's second question : ' ' How 
can we unite," the thought in every one's mind was 
of previous propositions for union which had failed, 
because it was impossible to see the end from the be- 
ginning, and the beginning had called for more con- 
cessions and violation of existing policy than seemed 
recompensed by the probable achievements of such a 
united movement. The chief concession was one as 
to the basis upon which Associations could be admit- 
ted. In the International Board where various forms 
of local organizations made different provisions of 
membership as regards activity, fees and church con- 
nection, there was strong sentiment for liberty of basis 
in the national charter. All The American Commit- 
tee Associations held uniformly to an open associate 
membership, and a voting and office holding active 
membership of communicants in Protestant Evan- 
gelical churches. There were at hand beside these 
two bases those of the World's Young Women's 
Christian Association and the International Commit- 
tee of Young Men's Christian Associations. The lat- 



222 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

ter was called for and read — the well-known state- 
ment of their evangelical church position, leaving 
open the definition of what churches were to be con- 
sidered evangelical in this connection. As the ques- 
tion reverted to the bases of the two women's move- 
ments involved, Miss Dodge continued: 

**Now, how can these two be combined?'' 

The response began as a paradox, it ended as a 
prophecy sure of fulfillment. 

*'I have never known how, because every one says 
they can 't be combined. The proposition made in the 
past has been union on the evangelical basis ; that ex- 
isting bodies may be a part of the whole body without 
changing their bases, and the new organizations be 
asked to adopt the evangelical basis." After the first 
discussion an unofficial and individual vote was re- 
corded as almost unanimous on the resolution thus 
stated, **That we make the attempt of uniting all 
present Associations of the International Board and 
The American Committee on their present bases and 
all future Associations on the basis of the Young 
Men's Christian Associations." 

Further suggestion as to name, headquarters and 
convention representation did not call for immediate 
action. The only other conclusion reached by vote 
was the recommendation to Washington of a united 
movement, in which the Women's Christian Associa- 
tion should retain the present status, a Young Wom- 
en ^s Christian Association should be affiliated with 
The American Committee, and that mutual representa- 
tion, a united finance campaign and a central execu- 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 22S 

tive committee should be constituted. That was the 
first fruit. 

People who were told of the Manhattan Conference 
rejoiced that there was to be *' union/' but her guests 
who saw Miss Dodge's face that day knew it was 
illuminated by something more than the thought of a 
union of two existent organizations. She saw aris- 
ing a new creation for young women, of young 
women, and by young women, in which the spirit of 
peace and good-will and the joy of the Lord might be 
felt and through it made outwardly manifest. 

Back of the fourteen women who met with Miss 
Dodge in May, were the Board and Committee which 
had appointed them, and back of those were the Con- 
ference and Convention by which they had themselves 
been elected. Fortunately the International Confer- 
ence would be held in Baltimore that very fall, and 
The American Committee had power to call a special 
convention competent to act upon all the matters af- 
fected by the Manhattan resolution. The sub-com- 
mittee appointed that day and its chairman, Miss 
Dodge, spent the summer in constant communication 
with each other and the field, concluding their labors 
with recommendations to their legislative bodies, to 
sanction the points already agreed upon, and to ap- 
point a Joint Committee of fifteen to complete the 
terms of union. The Baltimore Conference in No- 
vember, 1905, and the convention which The American 
Committee called in Chicago early in January of 
1906, adopted these resolutions and joined in asking 
for Miss Dodge as chairman. She associated with 



224* FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

her as private secretary Frances Field, general sec- 
retary of the State Committee of New York and New 
Jersey, who prepared the thirty exhibits for the mem- 
bers of the committee and the brochures for the edu- 
cation of the Associations. Such thorough gathering 
and sifting of evidence bearing upon Relationship to 
the Churches, on State Work, on the Metropolitan 
System and many other foundation stones in the As- 
sociation's structure, had never been known before. 
Workers in other organizations frankly coveted our 
opportunity, after forty years of experiment to build 
fresh from the very ground up. As fast as necessary 
policies were agreed on by the committee, they were 
reported to the field so that when the Convention was 
called for December 5 and 6, 1906, and Associations 
were asked to make application for charter member- 
ship in time to estimate the attendance of their dele- 
gates, there was a pretty general understanding of 
the nature, the privileges and the obligations of the 
Young Women's Christian Associations of the United 
States of America. 

At the Joint Committee offices there was the great- 
est excitement as day after day the charter member- 
ship applications kept pouring in from East and 
West, North and South, city and student, large and 
small Associations. The East had the advantage of 
transportation, so the blanks from Newark, New Jer- 
sey, and Lowell, Massachusetts, were first received. 
Some one said she felt as members of the Constitu- 
tional Convention of 1787 must have felt while waiting 
for the thirteen original states to ratify the United 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 225 

States constitution. The returns were equally suc- 
cessful and the credential committee of the Conven- 
tion was able to announce as charter members 147 
city and 469 student Associations. This included all 
but three of the city Associations of The American 
Committee and most of their student Associations and 
almost all of the Associations affiliated with the Inter- 
national Board which carried on work for improving 
the spiritual, mental, social and physical conditions 
of j^oung women. Ninety-six of the cities were rep- 
resented by 338 delegates, and 36 of these student 
Associations by 54 delegates at the Convention which 
received the final report of the Joint Committee and 
inaugurated the new movement. 

The South Church (Reformed) at the corner of 
Madison Avenue and Thirty-eighth Street, New York 
City, was the scene of the meeting. It was a think- 
ing, praying, working Convention. There was little 
in the way of entertainment and nothing in the way 
of spectacle. It made no impression upon the city. 
Intercession, deliberation and decision were the main 
features. There were greetings from the two presi- 
dents who laid down unselfishly the offices held only 
until the disbanding of the former national organiza- 
tion, from the general secretaries of the International 
Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations, 
Mr. Richard C. Morse, and of the Executive Commit- 
tee of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ 
in America, Reverend E. B. Sanford. There were ad- 
dresses which threw a search light over the areas to 
be cultivated by the new national organization. Rev- 



226 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

erend Charles Stelzle spoke on Christian Cooperation 
in the Industrial World, Mrs. F. T. Thurston on Chris- 
tion Cooperation Among Women in Social and Busi- 
ness Life, Mr. Eobert E. Speer on The Results of 
Higher Education Conserved for Christian Leader- 
ship, Mrs. Thomas S. Gladding on The Unique Re- 
sponsibility of the American Associations to the 
World's Work, Reverend Cleland B. McAfee on 
The Source of Power in Great Movements, Mr. John 
B. Mott on Our Summons to a Great Advance. Miss 
Dodge read the Joint Committee's last report and 
gave the business to the Convention in the form of 
resolutions relating to the organization of the body, 
and instructions as to how the executive board should 
proceed to accomplish the expressed wishes of the 
national body. These with slight emendations were 
adopted. The constitution was presented as giving 
notice that, after incorporation of the National 
Board, the next Convention would be competent to 
adopt it, and until then charter membership rights 
would be valid. The purpose was stated to be **to 
unite in one body the Young Women's Christian As- 
sociations of the United States, to establish, develop, 
and unify such Associations ; to advance the physical, 
social, intellectual, moral and spiritual interests of 
young women; to participate in the work of the 
World's Young Women's Christian Association." 

In the agreement between The International Board 
and The American Committee, to which constituent 
Associations had assented in applying for charter 
membership, it had been stipulated that the new Na- 




South Church, New York City, 
Where Present National Movement was Formed 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 227 

tional Board, when organized, should consist of five 
resident and five non-resident members from the In- 
ternational Board or its constituency; five resident 
and five non-resident members from The American 
Committee or its constituency ; five members from the 
American Department of the World's Young Wom- 
en's Christian Association, and five other persons. 
The nominating committee, of which Mrs. Margaret 
E. Sangster was chairman, had looked for women fa- 
miliar with work already done, but ready to see the 
new duties taught by new occasions, women who knew 
girls one by one, as well as by clubs and cabinets and 
committees, women most of all who felt from the bot- 
tom of their hearts that in the twentieth century, as 
in the first, Jesus Christ must be the center of life 
and that the Young Women's Christian Associations 
have come to the Kingdom for such a time as this. 
The convention elected their nominees. From the 
constituency of the International Board at headquar- 
ters, Mrs. R. A. Doiman, New York City, Mrs. R. C. 
Jenkinson, Newark, New Jersey, Mrs. Charles N. 
Judson, Brooklyn, Mrs. William W. Rossiter and IMiss 
Alice Smith, New York City. From the field, Mrs. 
Dudley P. Allen, Cleveland, Ohio, Mrs. F. L. Durkee, 
Worcester, Massachusetts, Mrs. Henry Green, Phila- 
delphia, Mrs. J. B. Richardson, Oakland, California, 
Mrs. B. T. Vincent, Denver, Colorado. From the con- 
stituency of The American Committee, Mrs. S. J. 
BroadweU, Mrs. J. S. Cushman, Miss Helen Miller 
Gould, Miss Janet McCook, New York City, Mrs. 
Robert E. Speer, Englewood, New Jersey, Mrs. Henry 



228 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

M. Boies, Scranton, Pennsylvania, Mrs. L. Wilbur 
Messer, Chicago, Mrs. Irwin Rew, Evanston, Il- 
linois, Mrs. William F. Slocum, Colorado Springs, 
Colorado, Mrs. A. McD. Wilson, Atlanta, Georgia. 
From the American Department of the World's As- 
sociation, Miss Maude Daeniker, New York City, Mrs. 
Thomas S. Gladding, Essex Fells, New Jersey, Mrs. 
David McConaughy and Mrs. John R. Mott, Mont- 
clair, New Jersey, Miss A. M. Reynolds, North Haven, 
Connecticut. The new members were Miss Dodge, 
Mrs. Stephen Baker, Miss Mary Billings and Mrs. 
William B. Boulton of New York City and Mrs. E. M. 
Campbell of Newark. 

The Association experience of these board members 
was as varied as the entire local and supervisory 
range. Four were presidents in cities. As many 
more had been pronounced Christian leaders since un- 
dergraduate days. Others were on university advis- 
ory boards. Several had rare gifts for friendly talks 
to young women, which had been widely expressed. 
Several had gathered their friends together for Bible 
classes, or had led the Bible study of winter evenings, 
or days in summer conferences. Some had taught in 
mission schools or had been employed officers. Others 
had administered large business interests; some had 
supported financially work which they were not free 
to do themselves. Many were officers of state com- 
mittees. Several had visited or resided in mission 
lands and were familiar with foreign work. Several 
had taken an active part in the World's Conferences. 
The record of many covered a half dozen of these 



THE JOINT COMMITTEE 229 

points. Mrs. Dorman (Mary Aitken) was a charter 
member of the Association of New York City and in 
1872 it was she who secured for the needlework de- 
partment a free equipment of "Wheeler and Wilson 
sewing machines for the Young Ladies' Christian As- 
sociation house at Irving Place and Eighteenth 
Street, and had since then been president, trustee and 
held other responsible positions for the International 
Board. Mrs. Messer had since 1888 belonged to The 
American Committee for which she had been the first 
editor of The Quarterly, had occupied all the four 
executive offices, had represented them at two World 's 
Conferences, and was also on the advisory board at 
the University of Chicago. 

There was a verse often repeated in the between 
hours of the Convention, though not sung as a hymn, 
nor made a formal motto. It was Arthur's words to 
Bedivere: *'The old order changeth, giving place to 
new, and God fulfills himself in many ways." 



PART III. 1906 TO 1916 

THE YOUNG WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIA- 
TIONS OF THE UNITED STATES OF 
AMERICA 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 

WEDNESDAY and Thursday of that no- 
table December week when the one new 
movement became an actuality, were grey 
days drenched with rain; Friday was bitterly cold; 
but the vagaries of weather did not dishearten the 
delegates whose votes had instituted the new order of 
things, nor the twenty-six members of the National 
Board who made each other's acquaintance at the 
first board meeting on December 7, nor the one hun- 
dred and forty-nine secretaries, superintendents and 
department directors who remained for a three days' 
conference after the close of the Convention. 

For the business of these board meetings the in- 
structions passed by the Convention were indeed a 
Magna Charta of the new government; and so com- 
prehensive and far reaching was this document that 
its contents could be appropriated only little by lit- 
tle. After election of officers — ^Miss Dodge was made 
president, and appointment of staff — ^the former sec- 
retaries of The American Committee, International 
Board and Joint Committee were called, there were 
set up three immediate lines of communication, 
through an office department, publication department, 

233 



234 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

and territorial committees. The Joint Committee had 
tentatively engaged the whole eighth floor of The 
Montclair, number 541 Lexington Avenue, at the cor- 
ner of Forty-ninth Street, where its own headquarters 
had been, and thus it was in their own official home 
that the new National Board met on December 7 and 
adopted the policies prefaced by the words, 

As a corporate body we are witnesses of Jesus Christ, 
and the truest service we can render is to show Him in every 
detail of work, (and continuing with these paragraphs on 
the office administration). 

That work should be conducted in a business-like, concise 
way. All details of office work and outside policy thor- 
oughly systematized and yet not so systematized that the 
loving touch should be omitted. 

That relationship with the staff from general secretary 
to office girl should be that of cooperative spirit, true 
justice, and a sense that all are working for and with the 
Board to develop a great work. The office work should be 
a model for the Associations. 

That the spirit of relationship should be generous and 
fair; that all dealings should breathe this tone. In other 
words, that from the start it should be felt that this is a 
Christian movement, and that our basis is being worked 
out in detail even to the courteous and prompt answering 
of letters and courteous replies at the telephone. An over- 
worked, under paid staff cannot show the Christian spirit. 

During Joint Committee days there had been much 
correspondence about an official organ. The Evangel 
had made its valedictory address in December, and 
The Bulletin, which had superseded The International 
Messenger, had also said farewell to its old constitu- 
ency. Both lists of subscribers were turned over to 
the National Board and on the first of February, 1907, 
there appeared the salutatory number of The Associa- 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 235 

tion Monthly, official organ of the National Board of 
the Young Women's Christian Associations of the 
United States of America. It described itself as a 
forty-eight page magazine, issued monthly during the 
year at a subscription price of one dollar. This first 
copy contained signed articles by Mrs. Robert E. 
Speer, Rev. J. Douglas Adam, Clara S. Reed, Eliza- 
beth Wilson, Mary F. Sanford, Arthur J. Elliott, 
Robert E. Speer, Bertha Conde, Eleanor Brownell, 
Helen Temple Cooke, and communications from writ- 
ers in the United States and in the fields occupied by 
foreign secretaries. All was under the editorial di- 
rection of Frances E. Field. The keynote was struck 
in Miss Dodge's first open communication as presi- 
dent : 

As I look at our work there seem to be three or 
four points that we should remember: First, Cooperation. 
We need to think of working with our Heavenly Father and 
his Son Christ, and with his help and power to coopera- 
tively develop the new work. We cannot any of us be in 
a hurry. We must do the best we can and then be willing 
to wait, to quietly study all the problems and to see what 
can be done, to lay foundations that are going to tell many 
years hence. Then we must all have patience. Coopera- 
tive patience means your patience and our patience combined, 
and with this thought I am sure you will have patience 
with us and not expect from us too much at once. How 
far are we ourselves fitted and worthy for the responsibili- 
ties which God has put upon us? It is just here that we 
must all stop and question. We can have in the new move- 
ment the greatest of buildings, the greatest number of edu- 
cational classes, but if we within ourselves are not true 
spiritually, and have not true fellowship with the friends 
who come into our buildings, then these great buildings are 
not worthy for the girls to come into. This would mean no 



236 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

spirit of patronage, but the loving working with, and not 
for, the members and girls who are in touch with Associa- 
tion work. 

Another topic upon which every bit of available 
wisdom had been expended was that of division of 
labor in field supervision. The experience of twenty- 
two years of State Committees and fifteen years of 
State Directors within, as well as advice from Young 
Men's Christian Association leaders without, had been 
sought and analyzed and weighed. And then like an 
inspiration there came to both Miss Dodge and Miss 
Field in their own separate homes and on the same 
day, an idea which might mean unity without cen- 
tralization, which would give to every woman in every 
section of the country a chance to develop those par- 
ticular interests which they believed most needed em- 
phasis there, yet all in a uniform way, because all 
would be extensions of a balanced center. In several 
sections of the country, Associations in the same State 
belonging to the State Associations of The American 
Committee and the State Boards of the International 
Board were charter members of the new national 
movement. This was true in Missouri, New England, 
New York and New Jersey, Ohio, etc., and to invita- 
tions from these States the National Board representa- 
tives first responded, that the break in supervisory 
relations might be as slight as possible. 

The recommendations approved by the convention 
under which they were working were: 

That the National Board shall concentrate upon develop- 
ing strong state, territorial or field committees composed of 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 237 

women residing in such divisions of territory, and that it 
shall be the function of the National Board to develop such 
agencies rather than to do direct local advisory work. 

That the relationship of such territorial committees to 
the National Board be made a subject for study during the 
neict two years, and that the Board shall have liberty to 
establish tentative relationships, subject to the approval 
of the next convention. 

It was hoped that these sectional committees which 
would be auxiliary to the National Board would be 
representative of the local Associations in each dis- 
trict. Each committee would be self perpetuating, 
submitting its nominations to the National Board for 
approval. The appointment of secretaries employed 
by each auxiliary committee would also be subject to 
the approval of the National Board, which would rec- 
ognize them as the field workers of the national staff. 
The annual budget would also be submitted to the 
National Board for suggestions and approval. Al- 
though each territorial committee would be responsible 
for raising the money in its own district, yet if the 
financial policies seemed too meager for the necessities 
of the field, the National Board might be able to help 
by assigning secretaries to work with the committee 
in securing a larger budget than the one which was 
first proposed. 

Before the United States membership met in Con- 
vention again at St. Paul in 1909, the Associations in 
twenty-one States had readjusted their immediate 
supervisory relationships into seven territorial organ- 
izations. The six New England States had estab- 
lished headquarters in Worcester, Massachusetts ; New 



238 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

York and New Jersey in New York City; Virginia 
and the Carolinas in Charlotte, North Carolina ; Dela- 
ware, Maryland and Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; 
Ohio and West Virginia in Cincinnati; Missouri and 
Arkansas in St. Louis; California and Nevada in Los 
Angeles. The difficulties centered chiefly around se- 
curing committee members unafraid of near and 
heavy financial responsibility, and finding enough 
strong, well trained and experienced secretaries. Miss 
Reynolds, the chairman of the Field Work Commit- 
tee, in presenting this report to the convention, spoke 
also of the viewpoint of the whole as imperative in 
the symmetrical development of the different parts of 
the country. 

This symmetrical development is not a question of the 
numbers enrolled in Bible classes or sewing classes; but of a 
controlling spirit and purpose which shall reach out through 
all the organization and machinery until it works the miracle 
of a fourfold development in the most insignificant indi- 
vidual girl whose antecedents or environment have dwarfed 
her life on one side or another. Whether or not the result 
is brought to pass through the local Association depends 
upon its leadership, and the territorial committee should 
be in a position to assist in securing wise and efficient local 
leaders. Back of the territorial committees stands the 
National Board as an inspiring and unifying force, work- 
ing out methods to be used by others in effecting the object 
of the movement, training both voluntary and professional 
leaders. The responsibility for the solidarity of the move- 
ment rests upon the National Board as a body. 

By 1915 all the States of the United States of Amer- 
ica had been grouped under eleven committees which 
were now called Field Committees of the National 
Board instead of territorial committees. The excep- 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 239 

tions were the District of Columbia and Hawaii, 
which are in direct relation to the National Board, 
also the colored Associations, which are supervised by 
specialists in the Department of Method, although a 
Conference held in Louisville, October, 1915, presaged 
a more uniform policy. 

Theory and policy have always frightened some 
people; other people have been deaf and blind to all 
abstract expressions. One might say only the incar- 
nated ideas rouse such people and set them to work. 
That is the reason that the state secretary and the na- 
tional secretary, living young women who have visited 
cities and colleges or whom the members have met at 
conferences, have stood to people for "state work" 
and ''national work" in scores of Associations. If 
the situation were severe the presence of the national 
secretary was implored ; plain visitation might be done 
by the less experienced state secretary, but in an 
emergency a call was sent for the national secretary. 
Even in Biblical language the telegram has read, 
''Come at once, the Philistines be upon us." But 
the core of the new system is that headquarters sec- 
retaries and field secretaries are all employed officers 
of the National Board, and differ not in degree but 
in kind. 

No one department answers its own questions alone. 
The Finance Department was to solve the problem of 
field financial support and its answer was joint finance 
campaigns. The Secretarial Department was to re- 
spond to the plea for suitable employed officers. Its 
answer was the National Training System. Yet the 



240 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Field Work Department did not divest itself of its 
own most important duty, finding women for auxil- 
iary committees, gaining their cooperation, and then 
leaving to them the cultivation of the soil. Seed 
might be sent and implements provided and agricul- 
tural experts might come by and inspect and advise, 
but the farmers themselves were to be responsible for 
the crops. 

All the earlier history had shown that state officers 
were the pillars which upheld the broad Association 
structure. One thinks of such chairmen as Mrs. H. 
M. Boies of Scranton, who created the ideal of what 
a state chairman could be. Her distinguished hus- 
band was one of the first to believe in permanent finan- 
cial support for a state Association. The State of 
Pennsylvania had but two chairmen in its eighteen 
years of history, for when Mrs, L. M. Gates succeeded 
Mrs. Boies in 1895 she continued until the disbanding 
of The American Committee in 1906. Mrs. N. B. 
Bacon was another who stayed by the stuff as the sec- 
retaries came and went and the tides of the State As- 
sociation of Ohio ebbed or flowed. Mrs. F. F. McCrea 
of Indiana, Mrs. Levi T. Schofield of Ohio, Mrs. C. C. 
Rainwater of Missouri, Mrs. C. A. Rawson of Iowa, 
Miss Mary B. Stewart of Michigan, Dr. Ida C. Barnes 
of Kansas, were all chairmen worthy of the name. A 
gentleman was waiting in an Association reception 
room one day until a state committee meeting should 
release a college friend who had come in town to at- 
tend it. As the ladies had assembled one by one and 
had gone out, several of them before adjournment, he 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 241 

had noted their faces, and finally when he had left the 
building with his companion, he said, *'Why do all 
your women look so much alike?" It was a laugh- 
able query, for that committee, like most of the others, 
was made up of women of different ages and tastes 
and environments. Some were faculty members, some 
wives of business men, some were young alumnae, 
some returned missionaries, some were city ministers' 
wives. What was there in common? There was this 
— ' ' For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the 
Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." 
There was not much glory, not much sitting on plat- 
forms, nor being introduced to admiring audiences, 
but there was much chance for weighing the results 
of neglecting opportunities or of making the most of 
them, for assuming financial burdens without any 
human assurance of a way to meet them, for interces- 
sion when the only possible power able to energize 
indifferent Associations was the Spirit of God, to 
whom prayer was made. For such women, barring 
the difference in the nineteenth and twentieth cen- 
turies, the Field Work Department was looking. 

In the opinion of certain past grand masters of soci- 
ety organization, the first Convention passed two con- 
tradictory resolutions under the head of finance, one, 
' * That the National Board shall adopt a budget of esti- 
mated receipts and expenditures, and shall as a cor- 
poration be responsible for the payment of bills con- 
tracted by it," the other, "That the National Board 
shall impose no taxes or assessments upon the Associa- 
tions, but that the Associations shall be invited to 



242 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

make a voluntary subscription to the work of the na- 
tional organization." But these resolutions were the 
outcome of much study of the processes by which 
money had been raised for the three great bodies pro- 
moting Christian Associations in the United States — 
The American Committee, the International Board, 
and the International Committee of Young Men's 
Christian Associations. 

In the first years of The American Committee its 
income largely consisted of gifts usually proportion- 
ate to membership, from student Associations paid 
through the state treasurers, then as the state budgets 
had to take into account salary and expenses of the 
indispensable state secretary for a whole or a part of 
a year, the proportion of these necessary budgets that 
was forwarded from state to national Committee grew 
less. Then, too, as the city Associations enlarged 
cost of maintenance to keep pace with enlarged work 
and the student Associations applied most of their 
revenue to sending delegates to the summer confer- 
ences, they sent in less of their local funds to the 
state, which had already decreased the proportion of 
state funds sent on to the national treasury. From 
the first the gifts to the World's Association were in- 
dividual; an English penny a member was the uni- 
versal standard, but for America, richer and more 
accustomed to wholesale missionary enterprises, five 
cents a member was substituted. This World's Nickel 
was, as a rule, collected during the World's Week of 
Prayer, which began on the second Sunday of No- 
vember. 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 243 

To augment this fluctuating inside income, mem- 
bers of the Committee supplemented their own sub- 
scriptions by asking gifts from their friends and peo- 
ple known to be interested in Christian work, or spe- 
cifically in the welfare of young women. The treas- 
urers' reports show the status at intervals. 

In 1887 the Association subscriptions were 65 per cent, 
of $689 receipts. 

In 1892 the Association subscriptions were 16 per cent, of 
$7,000 receipts. 

In 1897 the Association subscriptions were 4 per cent, of 
$13,000 receipts. 

In 1902 the Association subscriptions were 6 per cent, of 
$27,000 receipts. 

Not yet had the Committee dreamed of an endow- 
ment such as colleges possess for each chair of learn- 
ing, but the missionary board plan seemed feasible- 
asking individuals for the annual support of a secre- 
taryship, not a secretary, for the work goes on though 
the worker falls. Mrs. Phoebe Hearst in 1900 offered 
the first secretaryship. In time a few others were se- 
cured and several thousand dollars in legacies were re- 
ceived. 

Even though the sum total of the national treasury 
was small, the plan of voluntary contribution to state 
and national support was the best possible education 
for the members at large in the Christian fine art of 
giving to something which they could not see, and 
which might not directly benefit them although it 
might bring them great advantages. 

On the program of every state convention there 
was invariably a finance meeting. It might not be 



244 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

detected on the printed sheet by the delegate who 
represented her home Association for the first time, 
but the eye of a seasoned convention goer could 
pierce through the announcement of an address on 
*' Lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes" and 
spy the finance meeting lurking underneath. It usu- 
ally found its place Saturday morning, after the 
state chairman's report, which closed with recom- 
mendations of which the budget was a part, and after 
the local reports. The leader usually recited the ap- 
peals before the state Association for extensive and 
intensive cultivation and asked the members of the 
convention to pray for guidance as to what share of 
the budget needed to accomplish this, each could give 
or be responsible for securing. As the list of Associa- 
tions was read, one after another stated the amount 
that had been previously voted by the Association. 
Earely were the personal gifts announced. Only the 
collectors as they totaled the pledge cards knew of 
the sacrifice back of a penciled subscription of ten or 
* twenty dollars, the giver of which might have been 
supposed to do generously if she gave one dollar. In 
the early days of financing the Association move- 
ment, one constantly heard, ''How much she would 
give if she were only able ! ' ' Later on more frequent 
comment was, ' ' How much she might give if she were 
only interested ! ' ' Some of the finance meetings were 
a revelation of spiritual courage and devotion. 
Sixty-six delegates of the third Kansas convention in 
1888 pledged $1,160 ; in 1889 seventy delegates at the 
second Pennsylvania convention subscribed $637, and 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 245 

the next year sixty-five delegates subscribed $1,346. 
This means an average of from nine to twenty-one 
dollars each, and few of the pledges were ever repudi- 
ated. Most were paid promptly ; sometimes a college 
senior would find that she could not meet the obliga- 
tion she had assumed until the second year instead of 
the first year of teaching, a word almost equivalent 
to earning at that time. 

The opportunity for individual members to con- 
tribute directly for national work was given at every 
summer conference, so that although the percentage 
of Association gifts was small, the percentage of the 
budget contributed by members of local and state As- 
sociations and the members of the national Commit- 
tee itself was more presentable. 

So certain was the Joint Committee that the Na- 
tional Board would need a much larger budget for 
1907 than the combination of the largest previous 
budgets of the International Board and The Amer- 
ican Committee, that part of the work of its chair- 
man had been to confer privately with individuals 
before the Convention. By this means when the Na- 
tional Board organized on December 7 and adopted 
for the year 1907 a budget of $100,000, the amount 
was practically underwritten and the whole volunteer 
and employed force could devote themselves to what 
is termed 'Hhe real work of the Association," as 
though any one could label one part real and another 
part spurious, or minimize the Christlike qualities 
of self-forgetfulness and fearlessness of those who se- 
cure money by private appeal. 



246 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Aside from the personal subscriptions and those of 
interested friends, there were also revenue-bringing 
although not self-supporting departments, and the 
National Board could reasonably count on part of 
the necessary income from the Publication, Confer- 
ence and Secretarial Departments. 

Among the first chairmen of standing committees 
to be appointed was Miss Janet McCook to the posi- 
tion of chairman of the Department of Conventions 
and Conferences, as the programs and contracts for 
the season of 1907 must be made. Nothing was at- 
tempted the first year beyond eight conferences of 
the same character as in 1906, the Eastern Student 
at Silver Bay, the Central Student at Lake Geneva, 
the "Western Student at Cascade, Colorado, the East- 
ern and Central City at Silver Bay and Geneva, and 
the general conferences for both student and city 
members at Capitola, California, at Asheville, North 
Carolina, and at Seaside, Oregon. 

The very year after the International Committee 
had established its second summer conference at 
Northfield, Massachusetts, plans were made to open 
one on the Pacific Coast. But the serious railroad 
strikes of 1894 interfered. It was not until 1896 that 
the Mills College grounds near Oakland were used, 
and so successfully that the conference returned in 
1897. Nothing was done in 1898, and this doleful 
record might have been extended in 1899 but for the 
tour which Miss Reynolds as World's Secretary was 
making to the Pacific Coast, and the pluck of the 
western girls. Twenty-two from the University of 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 247 

California and four from the University of Nevada 
went up to Inverness, where their Christian fellow- 
ship included cooperative housekeeping as well. 

In was in 1900 that Harriet Taylor laid the whole 
situation before Mrs. Phoebe Hearst, who was in- 
terested in girls as girls and had very close relations 
with those studying at the University of California. 
She saw how such a conference as Miss Taylor pro- 
posed would benefit young women, and grow in 
strength and numbers until it became permanent, 
and proved her confidence in the plan by assuming 
the entire expense of the 1900 Conference, even pro- 
viding traveling expenses for one student from each 
college in California, Oregon and Washington. The 
hotel at Capitola-by-the-Sea was secured and the Con- 
ference launched. By 1911 that place was hopelessly 
outgrown and again Mrs. Hearst came to the rescue. 
She invited the whole 1912 conference to her own 
estate at Hacienda and opened negotiations with the 
Pacific Improvement Company by which the Na- 
tional Board was given an ample site on the Monterey 
Peninsula a little beyond Pacific Grove. Within 
forty-two working days roads, piping, electric lines, 
administration building, ten tent houses and a kitchen 
were constructed in time for the 1913 Conference of 
the Young Women's Christian Associations of Cal- 
ifornia, Arizona and Nevada. The grounds were 
dedicated and christened Asilomar (Retreat by the 
Sea). In 1915 a beautiful auditorium and a Visit- 
ors' Lodge were added to the permanent equipment. 
The grounds were designed by a woman, and are in- 



248 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

finitely homelike with their side walls of sand dunes, 
their curtains of pine trees, their canopy of California 
heaven and their outlook of ocean, gray in the fog, 
blue in the morning sun and purple and gold at sun- 
set time. 

By 1915 the eight national conferences had become 
fifteen and there had been added eight camp councils, 
under Field Committees, for industrial and high 
school girls, with less complex programs and more 
time for vacation resting. 

As difficult a problem as any that had presented 
itself to the Joint Committee was that of professional 
training for employed officers on local and national 
and foreign staffs. There were people who believed 
that the vocation of secretary, like that of nurse, de- 
pended upon the nature of the technical education 
for candidates as well as upon the nature of the candi- 
date. Others honored that view more by the breach 
than by the observance. Miss Dodge had never ques- 
tioned in any of the prefatory interviews and cor- 
respondence that the national organization must pro- 
vide for securing and training secretaries and giving 
advice about filling positions. The chief question was 
whether the training school — or schools, for that was 
also debatable — should be directly under the National 
Board, or under an educational board appointed by 
the Convention, or under independent corporations, 
recognized and endorsed by the Convention. Fortu- 
nately the leases of the houses in Chicago in which 
The American Committee carried on its Training In- 
stitute would not expire until 1908. This gave the 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 249 

National Board time to investigate what sort of train- 
ing the new movement would require. 

What sort of women would be required needed no 
investigation. That was patent to all. Mr. Theo- 
dore Roosevelt might have been delineating the ideal 
Young Women's Christian Association secretary by 
the words he used in another connection: 'Hhe strong- 
est are needed, those of marked personality, who to 
tenderness add force and grasp, who show capacity 
for friendship, who to a fine character unite an in- 
tense moral and spiritual enthusiasm." 

Both study and experience must be compounded 
with these personal qualifications. The California 
State Committee had worked out with Los Angeles, 
its headquarters Association, a practical course under 
direction, by which a suitable candidate might help 
in every phase of the city Association, and be given 
to understand principles as she went along. This 
was the key to the practical side before the profes- 
sional study. It also solved the question of one or 
more training schools, for each state or territorial 
Committee could conduct this elementary work at a 
place not remote from any of the candidates' homes, 
but the National Board itself could provide the gradu- 
ate school at its own headquarters, open to secretaries 
from the preparation centers and to other women who 
had been successful in the Young Women's Christian 
Association or similar movements. 

Upon this plan, then, the Secretarial Department 
Committee framed the training system. In the sum- 
mer of 1908 a catalogue was issued, containing the 



250 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

course of study and requirements for admission; and 
a large residence, Number Three Gramercy Park, near 
Fourth Avenue and Twenty-first Street, New York 
City, was fitted up with the equipment from the In- 
stitute in Chicago, which of course was discontinued 
at the same time. Names of faculty and teachers 
could not be printed, as the list of instructors was 
built up slowly even to the moment when class or 
lecture was due. The construction of the course of 
study was a veritable labor, as it endeavored to com- 
bine Bible and kindred subjects on which Professor 
Edward I. Bosworth of Oberlin and Professor Ira M. 
Price of Chicago and other theological professors ad- 
vised, curriculum staples as tested by the five years 
of the Chicago Institute, findings of board members 
and other authorities which came in answer to a ques- 
tionnaire sent out, and certain fundamentals as to 
the personal equations involved which were insisted 
upon by members of the committee — all in a year 
course. 

But on September 23, 1908, the National Training 
School opened with Caroline B. Dow as dean, and 
Charlotte H. Adams as resident Bible teacher, and 
eleven students taking full work. When Miss Dodge 
gave out the certificates at the first commencement 
three went to students from outside of the United 
States: Agnes Kingsmill of Eastbourne, England, 
Katherine Reid of Glasgow, Scotland, and Charlotte 
Sutcliffe of Canada. 

That same autumn five territorial committees and 
three state committees conducted training centers on 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 251 

the California plan, and a few of these repeated the 
course in the winter, with part of their lectures and 
their Association examinations coming from national 
headquarters. By 1915 ten of the eleven field com- 
mittees had maintained training centers. 

What of the girls in the meantime? While the 
National Board was pursuing investigation and re- 
organization, what was becoming of the girls and 
young women on whose behalf the Young Women's 
Christian Association was supposed to exist? These 
were inquiries steadily and gallantly made and heard 
from all parts of the country. The Board at times 
had to remind some of these spokesmen of a general 
sentiment, that they had sat in the South Church in 
December of 1906 and glibly voted that the National 
Board should concentrate upon developing strong 
supervisory committees throughout the field rather 
than itself doing direct local work. Miss Dodge's 
phrase, ** cooperative patience," was also used. Even 
as the founder of the Kingdom of Grod here upon 
earth came not to destroy but to fulfill, so this human 
agency attempting its little share of bringing in the 
Kingdom of God had to work slowly lest haste should 
mean destruction of the former things evolved by 
natural growth before any well-reasoned better new 
ways were at hand. The girls who might look to the 
National Board were in two places. They were in 
every nook and cranny, highway and byway of the 
United States, and they were in those foreign coun- 
tries not yet able to administer their own Association 



252 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

work. From the outset the Joint Committee accepted 
these two parishes and the Convention voted that 
there should be two coordinate departments, one for 
Home and one for Foreign work, equal in rank 
though size and internal development must depend 
upon what each undertook to do. Later the Home 
Department was termed the Department of Method, 
as more adequately expressing the nature of its duties. 
It was said at the first annual meeting that, 

The study of the field must be intensive as well as ex- 
tensive, to know about the needs of girls, the things they 
do not have, the things they do not want, the things that 
they are doing, their hard lot or their empty life because 
of their easy lot, the conditions peculiar to certain sections 
and certain classes, — these can be brought by scientific 
study in a form organized for use. 

There remains that more difiicult process which cannot 
be accomplished so easily or quickly, but to which all those 
who work with young women, whether volunteer workers 
or secretaries, are making a steady contribution, the study 
of the individual young woman — not so much what she is 
doing as what she is thinking, what is helping her, what 
is hurting her, what are the obstacles in the way of her 
largest life. There is a certain understanding of a young 
woman that comes only through the opportunity to relate 
her to every other woman. It is given to us to correlate 
preparation for service with opportunities for service; to 
increase the content of the sense of fellowship ; to make 
the claim that we are all members, one of another, some- 
thing real and vital by actual working; to bind all the 
activities of our Association life together by such inter- 
relations of foreign and home, student, city and industrial 
Associations as shall increasingly overcome any tendency 
to division in our Association life which might result in 
injuring the dynamic of our movement as a whole. 

Interruptions to the work going on with young 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 25S 

women in city and college, in mill, village and fac- 
tory, had not resulted from the readjustment of su- 
pervisory bodies. When the Young Women's Chris- 
tian Associations of the United States of America met 
in St. Paul, in April, 1909, and completed their or- 
ganization by adopting a constitution and approving 
policies presented by the National Board, there was 
reported a total membership of 190,795 in the 791 
local Associations. And this membership had been 
well occupied in 1908: 38,290 had been in Bible 
classes, 2,049 in mission study classes; the students 
had held religious meetings regularly during the col- 
lege year, and the other Associations kept up 350 
meetings weekly; they had enjoyed 3,912 social occa- 
sions, had studied more than 40 educational subjects, 
had had access to 114,336 books and 2,128 periodicals 
which they might have read if they had wished to do 
SO; 6,548 had learned to cook, 14,309 had learned to 
sew, 21,487 had found exercise or amusement or both 
in 93 gymnasiums, several thousand had helped eat 
the 5,054,940 meals served in 112 lunchrooms, 4,010 
girls at a time or 54,271 for the full year had gone 
to bed at night under an Association roof ; 23,882 had 
received the address of a safe shelter elsewhere, 17,302 
came back to report that they had secured a position 
through the Employment Bureau; 69,131 journeying^ 
by boat or train had had their questions answered 
and their troubles lightened by the Traveler's Aid; 
3,275 employed young women had managed their own 
150 clubs, and 3,006 younger girls had begun to learn 
to do the same in their 49 clubs; and there were 12 



254 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

secretaries in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Lahore, 
Colombo, Shanghai, Tokyo and Buenos Aires, speed- 
ing the day when these figures would be duplicated 
on other continents. 

The city of St. Paul, Minnesota, had organized an 
Association in 1907, which was the first fruits of the 
National Board in one respect, since St. Paul was 
the largest city of its size in the country without a 
Young Women's Christian Association at that time. 
Their invitation for the Convention of 1909 was there- 
fore very readily accepted. It was a peculiarly im- 
portant Convention. People had had time to think 
as well as to work since New York, December, 1906, 
and the National Board wanted the benefit of discus- 
sion with the field fully as much as its sanction for 
the proposed order of march for each department. 
One felt that it was truly a national gathering. 
Many of the Eastern guests had never gone so far 
west as Chicago, which they found was only a port 
of call to the Twin Cities of the Northwest. Some 
of the visitors from the far South and from Califor- 
nia verified the change of latitude by encountering 
a mild snowstorm. 

One result of this thinking was the statement of 
the purpose of the national organization. Plainly 
enough had the New York Convention declared its aim 
of uniting and developing Associations in this coun- 
try and helping in the World's work. It had even 
inserted what might be called a *' blanket clause,'' 
*'to advance the physical, social, intellectual, moral 
and spiritual interests of young women," which 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 255 

miglit cover expositions or other nation-wide business. 
But that was only the outer shell of its purpose, some 
felt; what should be the kernel within? So the old 
statement was distinguished as *'the immediate pur- 
pose/' and it was capped by these words, 

The ultimate purpose of all its efforts shall be to seek 
to bring young women to such a knowledge of Jesus Christ 
as Saviour and Lord, as shall mean for the individual young 
woman fullness of life and development of character, and 
shall make the organization as a whole an effective agency 
in the bringing in of the Kingdom of God among young 
women. 

It will be remembered that charter membership was 
granted up to the time of this Convention and that 
admission after this time was upon the terms of 
active membership — that is, the voting and office 
holding membership being limited to women who are 
members of Protestant Evangelical churches. The 
Joint Committee stood as a unit for an evangelical 
basis which recognized the Divinity of our Lord 
Christ, and salvation through Him, together with thei 
inspiration of the Scriptures; also that this basis 
should be in the form of membership in churches; 
that is, entrusting the voting power to church mem- 
bers only, rather than requiring a personal test from 
individual Association members. By such means the 
Association is placed as an auxiliary of the church 
and the charge of forming a new creed or denomina- 
tion is avoided. 

How to distinguish these evangelical churches was 
not, however, so clear, since some felt that the Young 
Men's Christian Association definition used by The 



Q56 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

American Committee was not the most satisfactory 
that could be devised, and while the Joint Committee 
retained this definition according to the decision of 
the first Manhattan Conference, still the chairman 
was authorized to investigate this matter of some fur- 
ther possible form. 

It was known that the first Young Men's Christian 
Association in the United States, that of Boston in 
1851, had been established upon an evangelical 
church membership basis, as were most of the sim- 
ilar organizations arising after that, but there was 
some variation, and at the Detroit Convention of 
1858 it was resolved 

That as these organizations bear the name of Christian 
and profess to be engaged directly in the Saviour's service, 
so it is clearly their duty to maintain the control and man- 
agement of all their offices in the hands of those who profess 
to love and publicly avow their faith in Jesus, the Eedeemer, 
as divine, and who testify their faith by becoming and re- 
maining members of churches held to be evangelical, and 
that such persons and none others should be allowed to vote 
and hold office. 

But a query arose as to what churches were to be 
regarded as evangelical. Hence the Portland Con- 
vention of the Young Men's Christian Association, in 
1869, appointed as a committee to frame a definition 
Dr. Howard Crosby, General O. 0. Howard and 
others, and they drew up in Scripture phraseology a 
statement aimed rather to signify ecclesiastical bodies 
which might or might not accept the different clauses, 
than to enumerate all the essential doctrines of the 
evangelical or trinitarian faith. This is the wording 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 257 

as adopted, except that the very last clause was added 
by a later convention : 

Aad we hold those churches to be evangelical which, 
maintaining the Holy Scriptures to be the only infallible 
rule of faith and practice, do believe in the Lord Jesus 
Christ (the only begotten of the Father, King of kings, and 
Lord of lords, in whom dwelleth the fullness of the God- 
head bodily, and who was made sin for us though know- 
ing no sin, bearing our sins in his own body on the tree) as 
the only name under heaven given among men whereby we 
must be saved from everlasting punishment, and unto life 
eternal. 

After that date Associations were entitled to enter 
the North American brotherhood if holding to this 
constitutional provision. 

The Joint Committee learned that certain people 
found difficulty in distinguishing between this defi- 
nition of an evangelical church, and the evangelical 
basis of church membership. That difficulty would, 
no doubt, be still greater should the new movement 
attempt even thirty-seven years later to frame an al- 
ternative for the Portland definition. But providen- 
tially, at this very time, the evangelical churches of 
America had come together in the Inter-Church Con- 
ference on Federation, and a great convention had 
been held in New York City in November, 1905. Five 
hundred official lay and clerical delegates from thirty 
constituent bodies united in forming the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ in America, **for 
the prosecution of work that could better be done in 
union than in separation.'' Their basic resolution 
was, 



258 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Whereas, in the providence of God, the time appears to 
have come when it seems fitting more fully to manifest the 
essential oneness, in our Divine Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ, of the Christian churches of America, and to pro- 
mote between them the spirit of fellowship, service and co- 
operation in all Christian work, therefore be it 

Resolved, that this conference authorizes the Business 
Committee to prepare a Plan of Federation which shall 
recognize the catholic and essential unity of the churches 
represented in the conference and provide for the coopera- 
tion of the denominations in general lines of moral and 
religious work. 

This Plan of Federation listed the denominations 
entitled to representation, and although an effort was 
made looking to the admission of non-evangelical 
churches, only one vote was cast in favor of that posi- 
tion. Bishop Hendrix, the first president, said of this 
new confession of Christ as Lord and God, **May 
a positive faith of the Christians in America who be- 
lieve something have a wholesome effect on those 
troubled minds who as yet can only see men as trees 
walking. ' ' 

One of the main objects seemed peculiarly appro- 
priate in view of the suggestion that the Young 
Women's Christian Association make use of this re- 
cent numeration of evangelical churches, namely, 
their effort "to secure a larger combined influence 
for the churches of Christ in all matters affecting the 
moral and social condition of the people, so as to pro- 
mote the application of the law of Christ in every 
relation of human life.'* 

These two methods of defining evangelical churches 
were brought forward in the proposed constitution 



PRESENT NATIONAL MOVEMENT 259 

in 1906. When the constitution was adopted in 1909 
the second was accepted as equally loyal to the deity 
of Christ our Head, and more truly representative 
of the churches which in turn represent Him, and 
the article on membership states that 

By Protestant Evangelical Churches are meant those 
churches which because of their essential oneness in Jesus 
Christ as their Divine Lord and Saviour, are entitled to 
representation in the Federal Council of the Churches of 
Christ in America, under the action of the Inter-Church 
Conference held in New York City, November, 1905. The 
list of churches which have availed themselves of this priv- 
ilege up to date will be found on record at the office of the 
National Board. 

Be saith unto them, 

"But who say ye that I am?" 

And Simon Peter answered and said, 

*'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" 

"Upon this rock I will build m/y church." 

"But let each man take heed how he huildeth thereon, 
For other foundation cam, no mam, lay than that which is 
laid, which is Christ Jesus." 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE YOUNG WOMEN OF THE CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 

CHILDREN'S singing games, where each 
player in the ring crosses her own arms, and 
with her right hand locks her neighbor's 
hand on the left, while with her own left hand she 
grasps her playmate on her right, are always sym- 
bolical of a true Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion. The players stand shoulder to shoulder, fac- 
ing every other member of the circle, their voices ring 
out in unison and set time for their actions. All are 
absorbed in the doing of one thing together, and at 
any moment the hands can unclasp to make place for 
a new comer into the game. 

The noblest illustration of the American Associa- 
tions as one part in the great world circle was seen 
perhaps at the World 's Conference of 1910, which met 
in Berlin. Thirty foreign countries had sent three 
hundred and forty-nine delegates, and from Germany 
alone there were eight hundred and forty-five. Na- 
tional consciousness had been lost the first day the 
Conference assembled in the Lehrervereins Haus, as 
one saw the number of men present and realized how 
many continental pastors were heads of parochial 
branches, as one saw the divers costumes of the differ- 

260 



THE YOUNG WOMEN 261 

ent orders of deaconesses and remembered that the 
deaconess takes up the Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation as one phase of parish duties, as one saw 
the mourning garb of the ladies from all sections of 
the British empire and recalled the death of Edward 
VII but ten days before. With national conscious- 
ness out of the way one had brain space for girl con- 
sciousness, that came in an abundant measure through 
the various sessions. But on Sunday it came in a 
revelation overwhelming as an avalanche. It must 
have been a revelation to the entertaining city as well, 
judged by the account, a column and a half long, 
found in one of the daily papers next morning. 

Zirkus Busch was filled up to the roof with 7,000 people, 
almost exclusively young women. Berlin had never seen 
such a picture before. 

On their way there the troops of girls in their holiday 
clothes made a striking appearance. 

They gathered in great crowds in front of the huge stone 
building, each group in charge of a deaconess. As the doors 
were opened, whole hordes would vanish inside, then the 
police would bar entrance until these had found their seats, 
before admitting another mass of humanity. 

One asked where did all this throng come from, as they 
did not look like well known people. You were told that it 
was the World's Conference of the Evangelical Jungfrauen- 
verein. 

The nearby cathedral was opened and immediately filled. 
Here an overflow service was held. 

It was about half an hour after the police closed the 
doors of Zirkus Busch upon this gigantic gathering of girls 
that the program began, but the time was occupied in sing- 
ing some of the beautiful German hymns. 

Youth and animation were there in full measure. The 
aspect was brightened by the brilliant characteristic garb 
of a group of girls from the Spree River district. One of 



262 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

her majesty's ladies in waiting and a number of society- 
women occupied the royal box. 

It was like a swift illumination to see that mammoth 
chorus of a thousand Berlin members rise "like one man" 
for the singing; their voices were clear and true, it was a 
pity one dared not applaud them vigorously. The men's 
cornet band of the Berlin Foreign Missionary Training 
School accompanied the congregational singing. All stood 
to sing. 

From far and near with one accord 
We rise to praise our common Lord. 

After a part song, a Japanese lady, Miss Michi Kawai, 
appeared on the platform. It was the first time, at least 
in Germany, that a Christian Japanese woman had been 
seen on such an occasion. She was clad in her long blue 
national costume, with wide sleeves and a sash tied at the 
back, and wore white gloves. She was obliged to use eye- 
glasses. After making several profound bows, letting her 
arms hang straight down as she bent low, she came for- 
ward and in a clear voice began a most thrilling testimony 
to Christianity. Her address was in English, translated by 
Pastor LeSeur. 

Brief abstracts of the two addresses by Germans 
and the greeting by Miss Dodge followed this re- 
porter's account of Miss Kawai 's speech. But the 
indelible impression was made by the people, by the 
girls, for the older women had stayed away to let the 
girls in. 

The World's Conference report rather took excep- 
tion to the careless classifying of the audience, and 
remarks : 

It may be an audience of those of whom little is gener- 
ally known. It was an audience, however, which indeed 
demonstrated the power of the Association among the work- 
ing classes, and those who are some of the most indispensable 
members of society the world over. Also more than one 




MicHi Kawai, 
Secretary of the National Committee of Japan 






THE YOUNG WOMEN 263 

foreign delegate present that afternoon took fresh courage 
to return home and emulate the wonderful success of the 
German Association leaders in reaching large numbers of 
working women and girls. For working women and girls 
are everywhere. Everywhere they have much the same 
needs and the same possibilities. 

Miss Dodge had shared this feeling, as she sat high 
up in the speakers' balcony, and looked down at that 
garden of girls' faces and hats, then had gazed up at 
the row after row of galleries, filled with girls, only 
rarely the black coat of a pastor or the hood of a 
deaconess with the girls from her church or the bonnet 
of an elderly woman. ' ' We must do this in America, ' ' 
she said, and the program committee for the 1911 
Biennial Convention caught at this idea. 

Tomlinson Hall is the popular scene of all the polit- 
ical and similar mass meetings held in Indianapolis, 
Indiana. Here the spectacular scene of the Third 
Biennial Convention took place, a gymnasium exhibi- 
tion planned by Dr. Anna L. Brown of the National 
Board staff, and executed by Mabelle Ford, physi- 
cal director, of the Cleveland, Ohio, Association. 
Whether the one hundred and seventy-five gymnasts 
of the fourteen competing teams, or the thousands of 
young women spectators were more enthusiastic over 
the drills and competitive sports it is hard to say. 
The audience sang and cheered and sang again. * 'Yes, 
I am satisfied," replied Miss Dodge again and again 
to the friends who had known of her Berlin expe- 
rience. But that was only half of the demonstra- 
tion. The Indianapolis press may describe the next 
part. 



264 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

At least five thousand women endeavored to enter Murat 
Theater Sunday afternoon. About three thousand of them 
succeeded in getting within the doors. Another thousand 
filled the banquet hall under the theater, and a third large 
audience attended another overflow meeting at Roberts 
Park church. Several hundred women who could not get 
in the theater returned home. 

But a many-sided movement like the Young 
Women's Christian Association of a republic where 
more girls are developing life freely than under any 
other government ever known, could not rest with the 
emphasis upon only the physical and spiritual sides. 
For the next Convention, in Richmond, Virginia, in 
1913, there was conceived the idea of a processional in 
which side by side should march the rank and file of 
Association members, the grave and the gay, the old 
and the young, the learned, the unlearned and the 
learning, from the city, the country, from the school 
and the university, the busy poor and the busy rich, 
the girls of America and those from beyond seas. 
This expanded into a pageant, ''The Ministering of 
the Gift," which by song and speech and action, por- 
trayed the study and work and play of all the Associa- 
tions. Six thousand people were on the benches, five 
hundred members of student and city Associations on 
the floor, dressed to represent every element of the 
diversified membership, and singing, as they walked 
round and round the great arena and finally disap- 
peared, what has come to be known as ' ' The Hymn of 
the Lights" and has been adopted into every Associa- 
tion family. The demonstration typified girls by the 
thousand, no two alike, each with something to bring 



1 



THE YOUNG WOMEN 265 

into and something to take from the Young Women's 
Christian Association. 

The Association is not the building, but the mem- 
bership. For ages people have been making clear dis- 
tinctions between these two applications of the words, 
The Church, and saying "The Church is not the edi- 
fice, even a consecrated edifice. It is the congrega- 
tion that has consecrated that edifice to the worship of 
God.'' The Richmond Convention marked the appli- 
cation of that same truth to the Young Women's 
Christian Association. 

But again the true membership does not limit the 
ministering of the gifts to its membership, and three 
commissions reported during those sessions on their 
programs, which might be carried out by every As- 
sociation in its own community or by individuals in 
their own lives and in the lives of their friends. The 
first was on Social Morality from the Christian stand- 
point, seeking and holding the place of the Associa- 
tion in the present day crusade against the social evil. 
The second was on Thrift and Efficiency, setting be- 
fore young women the worth of simple principles of 
living, desiring and achieving a balanced life. The 
third was on Character Standards, calling the atten- 
tion of young women in a concerted and sustained way 
to the danger of letting down ideals of conduct, ap- 
pealing to a firmer, surer moral estimate, and offering 
power to realize it. 

Never again could this contrast of human life and 
interest against material equipment be so striking as 
in this year 1913, when the whole national member- 



266 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

ship was being congratulated upon possessing its new 
national Headquarters. The grounds and buUding 
were given by National Board members and a few in- 
terested friends, the furnishings and equipment by 245 
local Associations. In September the offices moved 
from 125 East 27th Street, where for four years they 
had occupied quarters in the building of the Interna- 
tional Committee of the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociation, and the Training School from 3 Gramercy 
Park, to this splendid eleven story structure at the 
northwest corner of Lexington Avenue and Fifty- 
Second Street, New York City. It was dedicated on 
December 5, 1912, * * To the glory of God and the serv- 
ice of young women.'' As it was the first national 
woman's building erected in America for sole occu- 
pancy of any such movement, it serves as a natural 
and convenient meeting place for women's church 
councils and kindred organizations, and encourages a 
natural and constant cooperation with other move- 
ments in which thousands and hundreds of thousands 
of women are also united. 

Another notable structure also bore the name Young 
Women's Christian Association. It was the building 
on the grounds of the Panama Pacific International 
Exposition at San Francisco, California, open from 
February 20 to December 4, 1915, as a headquarters 
for the women employed in the Exposition and for 
visitors. The National Board assumed the undertak- 
ing and sent out a representative, Ella Schooley, who 
was executive of the cooperating committee and staff 
which carried on the enormous work. The building 




135 East 52d Street, 600 Lexington Avenuf, 

Training School Administration Building 

OF THE 

National Board of the Young Women's Christian 
Associations of the United States of America 



I 



THE YOUNG WOMEN 267 

contained a free information desk, reading and writ- 
ing pavilions, lavatories for men and women, a 
women's rest room, a small auditorium containing a 
motion picture installation and a cafeteria where 
wholesome food was sold at a moderate price. Social 
occasions and employment bureau and classes in sales- 
manship and stenography were maintained. At the 
Club House on the Amusement Zone in another part 
of the grounds employees found comfortable couches 
and baths, opportunity for reading and music, inex- 
pensive food, and sympathetic friends to help in con- 
stant emergencies. At the request of the Exposition 
Management a Day Nursery was attached to the main 
building. The daily attendance at these three places 
was numbered by thousands. On Sundays a vesper 
service was held on the portico of the main building 
addressed by clergymen from all parts of the United 
States. 

The National Board also cooperated with the Trav- 
elers* Aid Society, with the Committee of One Hun- 
dred, which conducted an evangelistic campaign in 
the city of San Francisco, with the local Associations 
in supplying suitable housing to women guests, and 
with most of the religious and betterment conventions 
held in connection with the Exposition. 

Not alone to the young women of the Associations 
was this service offered, but to all old and young men, 
women and children in need of its particular ministra- 
tions which were offered in the name of Him who had 
compassion on the multitudes. 

No other Exposition had seen such a challenge so 



268 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

adequately accepted, nor had any one undertaking of 
the National Board so opened the door to further co- 
operation among young women and the Christian 
Associations. 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE STUDENTS 

FACING its future, the Student Committee of 
the National Board recognized in 1909 that 
the legitimate field of its efforts was the 
17,000 women students in state universities, 37,000 in 
private high schools, 47,000 in denominational or 
church schools, 68,000 in women's colleges, 17,000 in 
seminaries and colleges of the second grade, 20,000 in 
nurses' training schools, 10,850 in independent music 
schools, 14,000 colored young women who were attend- 
ing secondary and high schools, and 1,100 young 
women who were enrolled in the Indian schools. 
About 450,000 more were registered in public high 
schools and normal schools. The Association itself 
had been acknowledged as the academic religious in- 
stitution in which students might claim as much pro- 
prietorship and as much right to self expression as in 
other student organizations which they controlled. 

Since 1909 the advance has been noted by the types 
of institutions and activities, by the increase in student 
initiative, and by the American participation in na- 
tional and international affairs where Christian women 
undergraduates are needed to round out some strate- 
gic attack. 

269 



270 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

In the state universities there have been in this last 
period large evangelistic campaigns where field and 
headquarters secretaries cooperated with leaders of the 
men's student movement. In the University of Minne- 
sota there was cooperation in calling a religious work 
director for the two Associations. In 1907 the Uni- 
versity of Illinois Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion called its own religious work director. This As- 
sociation in 1912 also raised $18,000 to meet a $20,000 
gift for a building of its own. 

In the church colleges there was also cooperation in 
evangelistic services with the clergymen connected 
with the evangelistic movements of the denominations. 
The college presidents and officers of the church boards 
of education helped in formulating the part the Young 
Women's Christian Association could best take in the 
promotion of Christian education; this seemed to be 
furnishing a means of expression for the religious life 
of the women students, helping them to translate their 
religion — sometimes a form of inherited religion — into 
practical Christian living both before and after gradu- 
ation. 

In nurses' training schools Bible classes were organ- 
ized out from some one common center, or a regular 
student Association was sometimes possible when some 
keenly interested superintendent or senior student had 
time to make it a living reality. When the National 
Board assigned Bertha Conde to the field of profes- 
sional schools, she concentrated upon the nurses' pro- 
fession and in 1910 the graduate nurses of New York 
City formed a Central Club which was one of the 



THE STUDENTS 271 

charter branches of the Metropolitan Young Women's 
Christian Association. In May of that year the club 
opened two houses at 54 East 34th Street, called a gen- 
eral secretary, and continued Bible classes in hospitals 
for nurses in training as well as among the graduates 
eligible for membership. 

In New York City also an art students' club with a 
religious aim was begun at the same time that the 
Joint Committee was laying the foundations of this 
present national movement, and was affiliated with 
the Territorial Committee of New York and New 
Jersey in January, 1907, as a Studio Club. First two 
rooms were occupied, then two apartments, then in 
1912 there was given a splendid house at 35 East 62d 
Street, where seventy students live and hundreds 
of non-resident members come for spiritual and social 
contact. 

Boston undertook metropolitan student work in 1911 
without a building and though the secretary ' ' rode all 
unarmed and rode all alone," the results of her er- 
rantry are already seen in the established colleges and 
amid the transient tides of professional students of 
art, music and drama in that center. 

Before the recommendations of the National Board 
were submitted to the Convention for adoption it had 
sent a secretary to visit colored student Associations, 
Mrs. W. A. Hunton, wife of the senior secretary for 
the colored work of the International Young Men's 
Christian Association, and in a year the roll of As- 
sociations was doubled in schools on government and 
private foundations in fifteen states. Colored con- 



^72 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

ferences have been held, leaders have received train- 
ing for secretaryships of colored branches in city 
Young Women's Christian Associations, and they have 
had a place in the great intercollegiate gatherings of 
the decade. 

In May, 1914, a negro student convention at Clark 
University, Atlanta, Georgia, brought together five 
hundred and twelve colored men and women from 
eighty-five schools and colleges, and ministers, edu- 
cators, editors and other leaders, both white and col- 
ored, for a five days' deliberation under the chairman- 
ship of Dr. John R. Mott. The stated purposes are 
being related to the whole membership through the 
student Associations and will help in gripping the 
present generation of Negro students with strong spir- 
itual and moral impulses in bringing them face to face 
with Christian life callings and other places of leader- 
ship, in meeting the claims and crisis of Africa, and in 
bringing Christian thought to bear on present and 
future cooperation of the races. 

The smallest group, but that one for which any or- 
ganization writing the words United States of America 
in its charter must feel the keenest responsibility, 
is the Indian girls who have found their way to the 
higher schools within or without the reservations. 
Some of the Indian Associations were many years old 
before any committee or secretary made a study of 
the situation and aligned the Association movement 
with the federal government, the Council of Women 
for Home Missions, the Indian Rights Association and 
other helpful agencies. Some had found a big sister 



THE STUDENTS 273 

in a neighboring University Association, as Haskell 
Institute, at Lawrence, Kansas, with the University 
of Kansas; the state secretaries had made other 
friendly alliances, but after 1909 it was possible to 
make a long enough, strong enough bond of connection 
to endeavor to surround Indian members with Associa- 
tion influences even when they had gone back to their 
homes. 

As to student activities, the most pronounced ad- 
vance in this decade has been in the relation of As- 
sociation Bible classes to the Sunday school and the 
relation of curriculum and volunteer classes. The 
outcome of much consultation with the Intercollegiate 
Young Men^s Christian Association, the Student 
Volunteer Movement, and the Sunday School Educa- 
tional Boards of the evangelical churches was framing 
a comprehensive course of voluntary Christian educa- 
tion to be promoted jointly by the Sunday school and 
the Association, planned to supplement the academic 
Bible work, to include the daily quiet hour, and to be 
based on Bible study one semester of each year, and 
mission and social study the other. The first text 
authorized was *' Student Standards of Action," by 
Ethel Cutler of the National Board staff and Harrison 
Elliott, and was issued in time for the first semester of 
1914r-1915. Each succeeding semester an additional 
text has appeared. 

The work of relating graduates to some form of com- 
munity service on a wide scale was begun in 1911, 
when 859 seniors in colleges stated their willingness to 
take up the burdens of the old home towns or the new 



274 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WOBK 

place of work or permanent residence. The first year 
512 expressed themselves as ready to help in the church 
or Sunday school, 55 would join the home missionary 
societies, 80 the foreign societies of their church, 583 
would enter social and philanthropic channels of use- 
fulness, 175 specified the Young Women's Christian 
Association, 103 expected to help in women's clubs or 
granges. These recruits were referred to church 
boards for home and foreign missions, charity organiz- 
ations, societies, local pastors and Association leaders. 
The last census (1915) records 1,558- outgoing students 
ready for work in 940 towns and cities ; of which 1,250 
recruits would come into church and Sunday school, 
135 into the Home and 142 into the Foreign Mission- 
ary Societies, 483 into social and philanthropic activi- 
ties, 460 into Young Women's Christian Associations 
and 445 into women's clubs and granges. 
• Even more indicative of the spirit of the new gen- 
eration is the student initiative. Within the college 
it is a matter of course. Organizations abound until 
it requires organized effort to regulate the number of 
major or minor offices that can be held by one student 
who constantly achieves, or has thrust upon her, posi- 
tions which may not lead to emolument, but certainly 
evidence trust. Field Committee members ' duties are 
so vast, that only a few faculty women can spare time 
for the visitation, correspondence, and sitting in coun- 
cil that would accurately represent current student 
life to this larger Association group, and truly inter- 
pret that in turn to the undergraduates. Alumnse 
soon get out of touch or those who are committee mem- 



' 



THE STUDENTS 275 

bers may not know the adjacent student situation. 
Summer conferences are inspiring, but they are made 
for conferring, not legislating. To get around all 
these difficulties in securing the undergraduates^ voice 
on their own matters, the Ohio and West Virginia 
Field committee devised and put into practice in 1912 
the Annual Members' plan. For each group of three 
degree-conferring colleges or universities in a field 
division of the national organization, one upper class- 
man is chosen to be for one year a member of the 
student department of the Field Committee. She 
meets at least twice in the year with the department 
in a formal meeting, and when her term expires is 
succeeded by next year's ** annual member," elected 
from the next in order of the three colleges in her 
group. 

Student initiative is also carried over into the sum- 
mer conferences, where the **self government" of col- 
lege or of dormitory is reproduced in the daily 
schedule of the conference. All those elements of life 
on a crowded conference estate which when we enjoy, 
we call personal, and which when others enjoy them to 
our discomfort, we call public, come under the student 
government of a conference. The idea spread further 
into the city conferences and the girls vacation camps 
where college girls as councillors led in making rules 
and became popular in enforcing them. 

The conferences have brought the girls of each 
student generation to think for themselves about their 
own careers, because representatives from the church 
mission boards come there yearly seeking recruits for 



276 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

vacant posts in America and all the lands of the globe 
where Americans are needed. 

No Christian movement of the twentieth century- 
dares to stand alone or tries to advance alone. Up to 
1912 the Intercollegiate Department of the North 
American Young Men's Christian Association, com- 
posed of men student Associations in the United 
States and Canada, had courteously included the 
women's student Associations affiliated with the Na- 
tional Board and the Dominion Council of Canada as 
the one American student body, incorporated into the 
World's Student Christian Federation. But in that 
year a definite working basis and program were estab- 
lished by forming the Council of North American 
Student Movements, of three members from each of 
the three above mentioned forces and from the 
Student Volunteer Movement. One of its first under- 
takings was a magazine, The North American Student, 
published during the academic year beginning March 
1913. Into it was merged The Inter collegian, which 
had in turn absorbed The Student Volunteer. The 
close relations with Women's Foreign and Home Mis- 
sionary Boards were furthered by the 1913 conference 
on plans of cooperation when delegates from twenty- 
four boards participated in a two days' valuable ses- 
sion under the hospitable roof of the national head- 
quarters building. 

1913 was truly world extension year. In April the 
delegates at the Richmond Convention listened to a 
call, the first that had ever come to the Associations of 
the United States after nineteen years of affiliation 



THE STUDENTS 277 

with the World's Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion, and eighteen years of affiliation with the World's 
Student Christian Federation, a call to look into our 
own methods of procedure, in view of the ends we were 
trying to reach in common with others, but by means 
not akin to theirs. They then voted to appoint a com- 
mission ''to consider as a result of the request of the 
General Committee of the World's Student Christian 
Federation," *'a restatement of the evangelical basis 
in student Associations in personal terms, in accord- 
ance with the method of the Federation," and later 
elected such a commission. This reported to the Na- 
tional Board its suggestions, which were approved and 
circulated to the entire field. At the Los Angeles Con- 
vention in April, 1915, after a long debate in which 
class legislation, the ultimate object of student Asso- 
ciations, and emphasis upon church relationships were 
presented, the first vote approved the following amend- 
ment to be definitely accepted or rejected in 1918 at 
the next Convention. 

Any student Young Women's Christian Association may 
be admitted to membership whose constitution embodies the 
following provisions: I. The Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation of ■_ — , affirming the Christian faith in God, 

the Father; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord 
and Saviour; and in the Holy Spirit, the Revealer of truth 
and Source of power for life and service; according to the 
teaching of the Holy Scripture and the witness of the 
Church, declares its purpose to be: 

Purpose 

1. To lead students to faith in God through Jesus Christ; 

2. To lead them into membership and service in the Chris- 

tian Church; 



278 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

3. To promote their growth in Christian faith and char- 

acter, especially through the study of the Bible; 

4. To influence them to devote themselves, in united effort 

with all Christians, to making the will of Christ 
effective in human society, and to extending the 
Kingdom of God throughout the world. 
II. Membebship. 

Any woman of the institution may be a member of the 
Association provided: 

1. That she is in sympathy with the purpose of the Asso- 

ciation ; 

2. That she makes the following declaration: 

"It is my purpose to live as a true follower of the 
Lord Jesus Christ." 
III. Qualifications foe Leadebship. 

1. All members of the Cabinet (officers and chairmen of 

standing committees) shall commit themselves to 
furthering the purpose of the Association. 

2. Two-thirds of the Cabinet members shall be members 

of Churches which are entitled to representation in 
the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in 
A m erica, and only those delegates who are members 
of such Churches shall be entitled to vote in con- 
ventions ; 

3. Members of the Advisory Board shall meet the qualifi- 

cations of Cabinet members. 

In June of 1913 the Tenth Conference of the 
World's Student Christian Federation met in the 
United States, at Lake Mohonk, New York. There 
were preliminary meetings in Princeton, where a 
statue by Daniel Chester French was unveiled. This 
was a bronze figure of heroic size representing **The 
Student Christian" and commemorating the origin of 
the Intercollegiate movement there in 1877. There 
was a garden party at Greyston, Riverdale, a dress 
parade at West Point, and on the evening of June 2 
there were met with one accord in one place three 



THE STUDENTS 279 

hundred and twenty delegates from forty countries, 
and under their motto **Ut omnes unum sint" they 
thought and spoke and prayed together. Full of 
meaning was this petition framed for Times of En- 
treat. 

O Lord Jesus Christ, Who didst say to Thine apostles, 
"Come ye apart into a desert place and rest awhile," for there 
were many coming and going, grant, we beseech Thee, to Thy 
servants here gathered together, that they may rest awhile, 
at this present time, with Thee. May they so seek Thee, 
when their souls desire to love Thee, that they may both 
find Thee and be found of Thee. And grant such love and 
such wisdom to accompany the words which shall be spoken 
In Thy name, that they may not fall to the ground, but may 
be helpful in leading us onward through the toils of our 
pilgrimage to that rest which remaineth to the people of 
God; where, nevertheless, they rest not day and night from 
Thy perfect ser\ice. Who with the Father and the Holy 
Spirit livest and reignest ever one God, world without end. 
Amen. 

Women had not met with the Federation in 1897 
at Williamstown when once before Americans were 
the hosts, but forty official women delegates from the 
United States of America were present at Mohonk, be- 
sides many Oriental and other foreign students ma- 
triculated in colleges and Christian training schools 
here. There was no business ; each person present was 
at liberty to appropriate any part of the presentations 
of student life, thought, and religious opportunity 
to her own use, and that of the students she served as 
class mate or faculty member or dean or secretary or 
in any capacity. 

But in December, 1913, a goodly percentage of five 



I 



280 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

thousand passengers, arriving in Kansas City the 
morning of December 31 for the Seventh Convention 
of the Student Volunteer Movement, were young 
women, although all the inspiring voices from the main 
platform were those of men. But in the sectional 
meetings there were scores of women missionaries who 
knew the life of women and children in the Far East 
and the Near East and Latin America, and who knew 
where best the undergraduates who were pondering 
over the location of their lives, could plant each one 
her own life, and there were women in the company 
which sat on the platform Sunday night, that last 
great night of the feast. They heard read the list of 
Volunteers who had died during the last quadrennium 
and joined in singing, *^For all the saints who from 
their labors rest. '' Some of them spoke briefly of their 
reasons for offering their lives under the supreme com- 
mand, and then came down to shake hands with their 
friends in farewell and receive their congratulations 
at being able to obey that command. 

This Convention, which comes once in a student gen- 
eration, speaks not only to those whose careers are yet 
to be settled, and to those who can transfer to a voca- 
tion in a foreign country, some occupation begun here, 
but to the undergraduates who can introduce a vital 
spiritual atmosphere and a missionary propaganda 
in their own colleges, to the church and Association 
leaders who are teaching women to love to give, and to 
those students from other lands who had not found in 
our United States the brand of Christianity of which 
home-loyal niissionaries had told them. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE CITY GIELS 

WHAT is a city? The answer changes with 
every decade. '* Where people live and 
work/' was a close enough definition at 
first for Association statistics. Then it was any place 
where people did anything but study, and we had City 
Associations and College Associations. Then it was 
any place willing to begin, even if not able to sustain, 
an independent Association. Geography and politics 
also help in this identification. One may speak of 
cities over 500,000 population, between 500,000 and 
100,000, between 100,000 and 25,000, and under 
25,000. 369 cities over 12,000 were enumerated by 
the census when the National Board began to chart its 
field. Young Women's Christian Associations exist 
in all of these strata. In all of these, some people un- 
derstand that the Association is *Hhe members — not 
the building," and some fancy that the building and 
its privileges, how much can be bought for a dollar 
membership fee, and what must be shopped for in the 
various departments, is the real Association. 

When a building or the building is the embodiment 
of the loyalty and enthusiasm of the members, that 
glorifies it as nothing else can adorn it, from the swim- 

281 



282 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

ming pool in the basement to the moving picture in- 
stallation and soda fountain on the roof. It is also 
praiseworthy according to its figurative windows and 
doors. From how many windows do the workers look 
out upon the community and see all the girls as they 
move about in all directions? Are there plenty of 
doors on the four sides for girls to come in — ^large 
doors for great assemblies, and little doors for steady, 
everyday wants? 

Some buildings, like those in Brooklyn, in Minne-< 
apolis, in Milwaukee, in Rochester, in South Bend, 
show that some one donor saw that what young women 
had accomplished in cramped, rented quarters was 
good, but with a bigger place all their own they could 
do and have and be better, hence a splendid gift was 
made. Some buildings, like those in Youngstown, 
Ohio, or Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and elsewhere, show that 
the whole community of young women believed in the 
Association and they often worked qiiietly for years, 
and culminated in one final wild whirlwind campaign 
to make up the required sum. 

The campaign which has been most noised abroad 
was the $4,000,000 campaign which closed on Thanks- 
giving Eve of 1913, in which $3,000,000 was given 
for seven Young Women's Christian Association build- 
ings in New York City. One of these was the already 
completed National Headquarters and six were for 
various branches of the metropolitan Association ef- 
fected in 1912 as the first example of genuine metro- 
politan organization. 

New nomenclature has been introduced. In early 



THE CITY GIELS 283 

years one often spoke of the Association as the 
^'Horne/* Almost every feature of certain Associa- 
tions was for the permanent or transient residents of 
the home. Then the boarding home was called the 
** Association" and sometimes it dominated or elbowed 
out other departments, sometimes it was encroached 
upon by them. Then separate buildings were erected, 
and by 1913 the newly christened ** Residence" was 
more generally regarded as simply one effort of the 
Young Women's Christian Association to solve the 
young women 's housing problem of that city. It was 
an important department, but still a department. 
Even with the addition of ''The Harriet Judson" in 
Brooklyn and the "Mary Clark Memorial" Home in 
Los Angeles, the capacity of all Association residences 
is only 7,207, though with the ceaseless coming and go- 
ing, permanent residents and transient guests have 
numbered 157,380 in a year. But members* initiative 
is flourishing and nearly every house has effected some 
sort of inside organization for social and religious ex- 
pression, growth and enjoyment. 

''Members, not building," is the key to much of the 
recent development. It explains the Stenographers' 
Association in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Associa- 
tion; the Members' Council at Aurora, Illinois; the 
Onondaga Indian Girls' Club in Syracuse; the Busi- 
ness Women's Club in Augusta, Georgia, where they 
have erected standards seen only by their results in 
professional and personal life; in Washington, D. C, 
where they have erected a Woodland Lodge, goodly to 
look at and to live in. There are now almost as many 



284. FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

club ideas and practices as clubs, all are inventors; 
clubs of graduates from the business courses and the 
cooking schools, choral clubs which have competed in 
song festivals, clubs from every department. Even in 
the employment bureau of St. Louis over a hundred 
hotel maids gathered regularly for a Bible class, prayer 
circle, and Sunday afternoon supper, helped support 
the Association's foreign secretary, took charge of a 
monthly service in a sanatorium, and created other 
ways of reaching and sharing an abundant life. The 
Hermosa Club, of Los Angeles, set a fine example to 
other young women in domestic occupations, though 
their club house on the Pacific Coast has not been 
rivalled as yet. 

Inside the buildings the members have come for 
classes; at least twenty per cent, join for these privi- 
leges. They have taken courses in First Aid to the 
Injured and received certificates at first signed by 
President Taft of the American Red Cross Society 
and Miss Dodge, President of the National Board. 
They have learned the laws of sex with all their social 
and moral ramifications. When work in their own 
trade was slack they have prepared themselves by 
special study to do work that the Association had 
discovered was in demand. They have come in the 
evening because they were earning during the day, 
and they have come by day to fit themselves to earn, 
or because father or husband had already earned 
for them. They came to the gymnasium to exercise 
their bodies or their spirits, they came winter and 
summer to the swimming pools to learn to float and 



THE CITY GIRLS 285 

dive and laugh. They came week days and Sundays 
into long or short course Bible classes, and for vespers, 
and for meetings and classes which they planned and 
conducted for fellowship in soul growth, fellowship 
with their known friends, and with other young women 
not of the fold but who could really become one flock 
and might own one Shepherd. 

Outside the building they have been just as truly 
on their own Young Women's Christian Association 
premises, as they have frequented the downtown lunch 
rooms or played on the athletic field or congregated 
as students of high schools or business colleges or met 
in temporary quarters rented in the locality that best 
met their convenience. Some of the members of col- 
ored branches worked so splendidly in the great 
finance campaigns that they can erect their own beau- 
tifully appointed headquarters. 

The last clause in the recommended city constitution 
of 1912 makes this all plain by stating the purpose. 

To associate young women in personal loyalty to Jesus 
Christ as Saviour and Lord; to promote growth in Christian 
character and service through physical, social, mental and 
spiritual training, and to become a social force for the ex- 
tension of the Kingdom of God." 

A once popular hymn began. 

Throw out the life line across the dark wave. 

Some decades later we realize that the enemies of 
girls' souls are working when the lights are brightest. 
So the modern Association steps over its own thresh- 
old. 



286 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Where cross the crowded ways of life 
Where sound the cries of race and clan 
Above the noise of selfish strife 
We hear Thy voice, O Son of Man. 

Some of the most powerful evangelistic messages 
which the girls of a city ever went to hear were de- 
livered in theatres. The Rochester Association in 
1904 paid $458 for an opera house and speakers for 
four Sunday afternoons. Two thousand girls in Los 
Angeles represented to that community the abundant 
life which Christ came to bring, by giving the Pageant, 
The Ministering of the Gift, in 1914. They have or- 
ganized Know Your City weeks where by lecture and 
visitation information was gained and diffused about 
the status of the city at that very moment. The City 
Council, Public Health, Child Life, Courts and Jails, 
Charities, Welfare Work, Industrial Life, Amuse- 
ments, Housing Conditions, Immigration and kindred 
conditions and institutions were discussed. They have 
cooperated with the churches of which they are a 
standing committee on young women's righteousness, 
in occasional and protracted religious meetings, they 
have found teachers for classes and sometimes pupils 
for the teachers. Groups of members have met in 
homes to study the Bible, or the unfolding page of the 
foreign Association story. They have come together 
Sunday afternoon on a shady lawn for a quiet service 
or have brought sacred music into a far corner of a 
city park. Hundreds and thousands of members in 
the Central and Eastern states have lavished their time 
and strength as loyal church members during great 



THE CITY GIRLS 287 

evangelistic campaigns, and then kept on through the 
following months and years after the tabernacle was 
dark and the voice of the evangelist and the sound of 
the singing were no longer heard in that city, helping 
into Christian tastes and habits the new followers of 
their own Lord. They have carried Travelers' Aid 
work alone or in conjunction with other societies, they 
have been in league with police departments to conduct 
to the Association headquarters girls and women who 
were perishing because they did not know where to 
find these Isles of Safety, or did not know that there 
was any such thing as a Young Women's Christian 
Association to ensure safety. And several cities 
watching the tide of affairs added to their staffs 
''police women," as the protective agents were styled. 
**You build a great building and then you try to 
see how much you can do outside it!'* Yes — for the 
weeks of opportunities are not all in the winter, as 
was once taken for granted. The summer program is 
often as heavy, though vastly different. From 1910 
to 1912 the number of summer camps and cottages in- 
creased more than 200 per cent. These are not all 
owned outright; college dormitories in the suburbs 
sheltered guests who turned troUeywards every morn- 
ing; winter homes have been put at the disposal of 
Southern Associations, even state barracks have been 
loaned when girl guests from the whole municipality 
were invited. Neighboring Associations have set up 
their tents side by side and within the Field Commit- 
tees' great camps on the lakes or ocean, and among 
the hills and mountains, city girls have come together 



288 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

for the summer season. *'We came, two girls to- 
gether, for two weeks. We went away knowing two 
hundred girls and will never stop being acquainted 
with them. ' ' 

But the clearest proof of the democracy of the 
Young Women's Christian Association, some one ha» 
said, is the City Summer Conference, and among the 
1,502 city delegates at six conferences in 1915, coming 
from 224 places, there was a record of 83 occupations 
in which they spent their work days, and 38 church 
affiliations through which they worshiped on Sunday. 

Might one say that the democracy aimed at is of the 
nature which does not declare ' ' I am as good as she is, ' ' 
but ''She is as good as I"? 






u 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE GIRLS IN INDUSTRY 

**"^^ ET US resolve that in the new body we will 
work with girls, not for them." 

This was the thought of a letter written to 
the chairman of the Joint Committee in 1906. 

An invitation to grown up people to "Come and 
work with us'' is almost as acceptable as an invitation 
to children to * ' Come and play with us. " And among 
the 1,199,452 women in manufacturing and mechanical 
pursuits, the 142,265 saleswomen, the 21,980 telephone 
and telegraph operators and the 328,935 employees in 
laundries, there were hundreds of proved leaders al- 
ready a part of the Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation. Not the cities alone but the prairie towns 
with their canning factories, the hillside villages with 
their water powers, the fruit regions with their pack- 
ing houses, become industrial centers, and when girls 
come together in any kind of a center, association is 
possible and the Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion may be needed. 

It was reported in 1909 that 14,877 young women 
in the industrial field had some part in the weekly 
classes and meetings held in mills and factories and 
business places, while 3,046 were club members in 

289 



290 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

eighty-nine Associations. Fifty-five industrial and 
extension secretaries were helping in bringing people 
together and working out plans which needed an out- 
side ally. Besides this general extension of manifold 
interests from the main administration there were 
several separate industrial and branch Associations. 

Early in 1904 young women in the cotton mill vil- 
lages of the Piedmont section, South Carolina, were 
able to open a local Association by the generosity of 
the mill managers, notably Mr. Thomas F. Parker of 
the Monaghan Mills, Greenville, who set apart a place 
for the general activities and a cottage for the general 
secretary and teacher of household economics. In 
1905 the office and factory employees of the Larkin 
Company of Buffalo evolved an Association with 
classes and most of the usual all-round features as a 
branch of the Buffalo Association, and this scheme was 
adopted in many details in several other manufactur- 
ing houses, chiefly in New York and New Jersey. 

The next step in working with this great group, one 
third of all the women over sixteen years of age in 
gainful occupations at that time, was a resolution 
adopted at Indianapolis in 1911. 

That in order to make more far-reaching the contact of 
the Young Women's Christian Association with women in 
industry, the extension of Association work into factories 
through noon meetings, classes and informal clubs be con- 
tinued, and whenever possible in preference to organizing 
Associations within factory walls, the establishment of 
rented centers in the industrial sections of cities be advo- 
cated and employers be encouraged to contribute to the fimds 
of the central Association which shall employ the secretaries 
in charge of this work. 



THE GIRLS IN INDUSTRY 291 

And after this came Federation. For nearly a 
score of years the self-governing club in the factory 
had been the favorite form of cooperation. In cities 
where club officers and forewomen from several estab- 
lishments met to discuss common interests, it was nat- 
ural to think of making closer contact between the club 
memberships. Detroit projected the idea of a Feder- 
ation of Industrial Clubs from the original Grace 
"Whitney Hoff League, begun in 1908. Then Akron 
and other cities followed. This has developed as an 
industrial movement which belongs to the girls, ac- 
customed to self government by the management of 
their own factory clubs, and finds a place in the City 
Association through membership there taken for 
granted in the club membership. 

It is true that the great summer conferences were 
democratic and catered to all tastes, but so much was 
offered, conscientious club leaders followed so exacting 
a program schedule, that the joyful days failed as va- 
cation. The club girls' daily councils were the heart 
of their whole conference. This made easy transfer- 
ence to the vacation camps of the Field Committees, 
and in 1913 the club girls' council was discontinued 
at Silver Bay and the club members of the North- 
eastern Associations came together at Altamont, New 
York, and those of the Delaware, Maryland and Penn- 
sylvania Associations at Camp Nepahwin, Canton, 
Pennsylvania, for conference on their own work, and 
quiet hours of Bible study and intimate religious meet- 
ings to gain inspiration to do what they saw before 
them. Other sections continued the idea. 



M 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE COUNTRY GIRLS 

**T^ 4r E^^EI^Sj ^^^ equipment/' is equally 
the active principle of work in the coun- 
try, but members with the cooperation 
of a secretary of their own, working toward a higher 
spiritual and mental and social and physical and eco- 
nomic plane. 

In the series of resolutions adopted at the St. Paul 
Convention in 1909 the unit of organizations for towns 
of 12,000 and under, and adjoining communities, was 
fixed as the County Association. At the same time 
there was more or less discussion of rural development, 
but in the ''Secretaries' Association" Conference 
which followed in Plymouth Church, Minneapolis, the 
keenest interest centered in the section for county 
workers, when Elizabeth McKenzie recounted the 
bursting into Association life of Woodford County, 
Illinois. 

A girls' club in the little college town of Eureka, 
Illinois, had found a way to open up clubs, Bible study, 
and a class in physical education in the college gym- 
nasium taught by the physical director of the Peoria 
Association. This was the beginning, and on October 

17, 1908, girls and women came together in the Pres- 

292 



THE COUNTRY GIRLS 293 

byterian Church at El Paso and organized a county 
Young Women's Association. In April there were 
two hundred and sixty-nine members in seven branches 
in small towns, ranging up to 2,545 in population. In 
Roanoke they had furnished rooms, used as a center 
for the farmers' wives who came to town for shopping, 
and for their own classes in gymnasium drill, normal 
Bible study and shirt waist making. "Washburn mem- 
bers held their gymnasium class in a board member's 
home. The El Paso girls turned their Christmas Gift 
Club into a self-governing evening club which they 
named *'Alta Vista," and took for it the altruistic 
motto, * * Give to the world the best that you have, and 
the best will come back to you." An alumna of the 
University of Illinois who had also been graduated 
through the various degrees of committee, cabinet, and 
conference of that student Association was chairman 
of the local committee in Minonk where a Bible class 
of twenty-two and a sewing class of eight were the 
stated weekly gatherings of members. There had been 
nearly five hundred present at the seven social gather- 
ings held during two months in the whole county. 

The college girls were also heard from at Minneap- 
olis. Another report came from the University of 
Michigan, where a group of seniors whose homes were 
in small communities had formed a club to study what 
they could do for their home localities after leaving 
college. In line with this was the account of a class, 
other than of seniors, in the University of Kansas As- 
sociation, studying what may be accomplished through 
the channels of home, church and school in small com- 



294 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WOIUK 

munities. Each member determined to work out some 
of the methods during her vacation days and to report 
progress. 

Under these two heads have the women and girls 
of the small towns and country been developing their 
Association life, permanent county organization, and 
summer Eight Week Clubs. ''How can I, except 
some one shall guide me?'' is not only the cry of the 
solitary traveler in the desert between Jerusalem and 
Gaza, it is the cry of the isolated girls of the country 
districts of the United States. The Eight Week Clubs 
which Helen F. Barnes started in Texas and elsewhere 
stood for eight weeks of learning how during the col- 
lege year, and eight weeks of passing on in the sum- 
mer vacation, passing on in that most difficult of all 
fields for new enterprises, one's own home neighbor- 
hood. The girls who came back to college had so much 
to tell that was new and absorbing and girls who 
stayed on at home had so much to do and think of that 
was new and suggestive, that nation-wide expansion 
was next in order and in the spring of 1913 a detailed 
plan was sent to all student Associations offering a 
certificate of Commendation for Community Service 
to clubs making adequate report of adequate service. 
These certificates were signed by Miss Dodge and by 
Miss Jessie Woodrow Wilson of the National Student 
Committee. The purpose as stated in the outline could 
almost be pieced together line by line from the reports 
of the three following seasons. 

To bring the girls and young women in smaller communi- 
ties together during the summer vacation season for the pur- 



THE COUNTRY GIRLS 295 

pose of learning some of those things which mean a happier 
and more useful life; to unite them for definite service to 
their home neighborhoods; to learn about the work of the 
Yoimg Women's Christian Association, and to be of help in 
bringing its opportunities to other girls in the country and 
small towns. 

The reports for 1915 give figures as follows: 213 
Eight Week Clubs with a total membership of 3,658 
girls and with leaders representing 98 different col- 
leges. 

Any team work soon means a conference. The title 
of the Central City Conference was changed to Cen- 
tral City and County in 1914, and there were eighty 
representatives from fourteen counties who enjoyed it 
but asked for their own conference for 1915. This 
the National Board arranged at the nearby site, Con- 
ference Point, by which name old Camp Collie again 
comes upon the Young Women 's Christian Association 
scene. Here in 1886 nineteen college girls from eight 
states had started their National Association, a work 
so visibly feeble that almost anything might break it 
down. Yet within eight years it was seen around the 
world and must be modeled after in India and else- 
where where the World's Committee had oversight. 
Here in 1915 eighty-three girls from the small towns 
and open country of twelve counties in seven of these 
same states, and four others, came together for the 
first county summer conference, and no one dares pre- 
dict what they may achieve in that same space of years. 

So much for facts. The inspiration comes to many 
through memorizing the ** Helen Gk)uld Bible Verses," 
as the list of Scripture passages is called, for learning 



296 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

which Mrs. Finley J. Shepard gives every member a 
copy of the Bible. Although the offer is open to all 
Association members yet the country girls seem to have 
more quiet time for committing verses to memory. 
Inspiration comes to others through the county camps 
like Camp Chedwell of Chautauqua County. Inspira- 
tion comes to all through cooperating with country 
churches and realizing that while the county Young 
Women ^s Christian Associations are a part of a new 
country life movement, they are also part of an es- 
tablished Christian order centuries old, adapted not 
alone to ** yesterday/' but equally well to ** to-day and 
forever." 



L 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE YOUNG GIRLS 

**Tr ITTLE Girls' Christian Association/' 
This comprehensive title was the name 
which a company of children in Oakland, 
California, were pleased to take thirty-five years ago. 
Their desire to become an auxiliary of the Oakland 
Young Women's Christian Association was granted, 
and though their Saturday morning's meetings did not 
continue for any length of time, nor their charitable 
exertions in collecting clothes and distributing them 
to the poor families persist until all the deserving and 
undeserving of the town had been freshly clad, yet the 
children were happy, did much good and were over- 
joyed at the thought of being lawfully connected with 
an international movement. 

More persistent has been the girls' branch in Pough- 
keepsie, which claimed for many years to be the only 
definitely organized branch of its kind in the country. 
On March 30, 1886, girls from ten to sixteen years of 
age formed a miniature Association and within a year 
counted one hundred and ten members and a secretary 
of their own. Bertha Van Vliet. They had raised 
money towards furnishing a reading room, and a 
game room. They had also a spacious hall for enter- 

297 



298 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

tainments and calisthenics, but were not content with 
this and found time during the three afternoons of 
each week for cooking and music classes. They chose 
their own members as leaders of their Monday half 
hour devotional meetings. 

Young girls were in evidence in most of the city 
Associations, sometimes welcomed as "the women of 
to-morrow, ' ' sometimes unwelcome and sometimes con- 
sidered a natural detriment because older girls did not 
like "to find the rooms full of little girls,'* as the fact 
was sometimes hospitably stated. They were always 
allowed in a Saturday morning gymnasium class, how- 
ever. In the '90 's the Association tried to assemble 
all the junior activities in some form of branch organ- 
ization on the segregation principle. Even so late as 
1909 there were only ten junior department secre- 
taries. 

But the girls were to have their day. As the self 
governing clubs made their way along, young girls 
kept proving in them their capacity for self-control 
and cooperation. They showed that they could be on 
hand and not under foot. In the rooms or building a 
line between children and girls of Association age 
was drawn. Then the secretaries began confessing 
that they needed to know more about girls before 
they could deal fairly and justly and affectionately by 
individual girls, and they took the topic of the Adoles- 
cent Girl for their Minneapolis Conference in 1909. 
After that they "stayed not for brake, and they 
stopped not for stone"; they besieged the National 
Board for help and they took counsel with the active 



THE YOUNG GIRLS 299 

girls in their own Associations, the high school 
students and grade girls, the girls who had stopped 
school to go to work and for other reasons. They put 
a plank into the platform of the County Association. 
All the resources of the Association were now opened 
everywhere. 

The National Board through many volunteers and 
secretaries took paii: in those days and months of 
consultation in the Board Koom of the National offices 
and of demonstration at the Studio Club before the 
arcana of the Camp Fire Girls were first revealed to 
an eager audience at the annual meeting of the whole 
Board in 1912. 

Many local Associations and one Field Committee 
followed the example of calling a secretary for the 
Girls' Department. In four years the membership 
has increased eighty per cent, and the value of mem- 
bership even more greatly. 

In 1915 two conferences were held for high school 
girls alone. This was necessitated by the rapidly de- 
veloping student movement among secondary school 
girls manifested by clubs, branches and Associations 
under city, county and older student leadership. In 
large cities where there are several high schools, 
unions of these clubs have been effected by the organ- 
ization of High School Councils, the last word in 
younger student initiative. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE STRANGERS WITHIN OUR GATES 

THE first immigrant girl in whom Americans 
as a whole have been interested was Pris- 
cilla Mullens, whose domestic graces and 
social readiness as appreciated by John Alden and 
Captain Miles Standish have been recorded for us by 
Longfellow. Girls coming over the border from 
Canada and the English speaking arrivals of the mid- 
dle of the last century fitted into United States 
conditions almost imperceptibly; the Germans and 
Scandinavians of the next generation also went with 
swift steps straight into domestic occupations in 
American homes. 

When the Young Women's Christian Association 
folk realized that to the difficulties all strangers in a 
strange land encountered, these newcomers added the 
handicap of ignorance of the still stranger speech, 
they attempted English classes for foreigners in many 
places. These were usually informal Thursday after- 
noon affairs. The girls came as regularly as they 
could, got acquainted with each other and their volun- 
teer teachers, learned to read a little, tried to master 
the English consonant combinations and ceased the 
afternoon with a little fancy work and coffee drinking. 

300 



STRANGERS WITHIN OUR GATES 301 

The teachers, for the most part, knew little of phonet- 
ics or of Grimm's law, but if they were sympathetic 
the pupils made headway enough to merge into the 
regular departments of the whole Association. But 
this took many years and only a few went unswerv- 
ingly on. 

All America began to think more about the for- 
eigners on our shores. Christian prophets like Ed- 
ward A. Steiner waked up the churches; the Women's 
Home Missionary Societies began to think of what lay 
here and over the sea, outside Ellis Island, to which 
they had largely confined themselves; and the Na- 
tional Board of Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tions appointed a Committee of Research and Investi- 
gation. Then there appeared in December, 1910, an 
open door on Manhattan Island and a new term in the 
Association encyclopedia, an ' ' International Institute ' ' 
of the Young Women's Christian Association. Later 
this removed to 113 East 34th Street. Girls released 
to New York City by the port officials were called upon 
a few days after they arrived by a visitor speaking 
their own language, explaining to them the ways of 
working and going about and living in this new part 
of the world. Invitations to free English classes for 
other Finns or Italians or Syrians were accepted, then 
came acquaintance and friends and a grasp of spiritual 
truth. Trenton, Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Los 
Angeles adopted the same plan, namely, a branch 
headquarters accessible for foreign people, an Ameri- 
can Immigration secretary, foreign visitors, teachers 
and director of special activities. 



302 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK | 

Back of this are efforts to connect American help- 
fulness to the organizations in the old home lands; 
and on every side are efforts to relate the new Ameri- 
cans, as soon as may be, to the best institutions and 
forces in the land they chose or were forced to adopt. 



CHAPTER XXV 

GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 

ALL the young women upon the globe are not 
claimed by the United States of America in 
its membership, but from India, China, 
Japan, the Argentine and Turkey, they have asked for 
American leaders, and therefore seem to stand in a 
closer relation to us than do young women of other na- 
tions working independently or with assistance of 
other secretaries of the World's Young Women's 
Christian Association. 

Before there was any thought of the city Associa- 
tion or national committees or secretaries, mission- 
aries who had once been Association workers had made 
use of the Association plan of members and officers 
and committees with the school girls they were teach- 
ing. Mrs. Wishard wrote of several such during her 
early work tours, and The Evangel occasionally 
printed messages from such student groups in Naga- 
saki (1889), Hang Chow (1890) and Tung Cho 
(1892). That they were truly indigenous and not 
a mere projection of the foreigners' American notions 
may be seen from incidental extracts of this corre- 
spondence. 

We were in all nineteen members in it, but now there 
are thirteen — some of them have gone to their homes and 

303 



304 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

some were married, and some have gone to learn other 
things. One with us is a new member. She was baptized 
this month on the second Sunday. 

We must pray for you in America: we know that is a 
good work we should do. Zech. iv:6. That is true a good 
motto, also we have written it on the blackboard. Are there 
any girls in your Association who have studied the Holy 
Bible from Genesis to Malachi? Our first class has studied 
and been examined on every book. 

We had such a good letter in English from Nagasaki Japan 
School Assistant. They told us the Association of theirs was 
organized May, 1^89, and we have answered to them. Miss 
Guinness wrote the book, "In the Far East." We have seen 
her. She lives in Honan, China. Last year in the June 
month she was here and attended our Wednesday evening 
prayer meeting; such very kind words to exhort us in the 
14th chapter of St. John. She is a very lovely lady. 

I write this English myself, but I cannot very fast. 

Signed by a Chinese teacher. 

It has already been seen how India came into con- 
tact with America through calling a secretary to Ma- 
dras in 1894 who became national traveling secretary 
two years later, which was about twenty years after 
the first Indian branches had come into existence. 
Miss Maud Orlebar of England had reached Calcutta 
early in 1894. 

Even when Agnes Hill was succeeded in 1908 by 
Ethel Hunter of Scotland as national secretary, the 
American bond was still strong, for Miss Hunter got 
her technical preparation at the Secretaries' Train- 
ing Institute in Chicago and was in constant com- 
munication with the United States. 

It sounds like the most ancient of ancient history 
to read in the report of the world's conference in 
1898: 



GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 305 

European and American leaders in China are made much 
of and their presence is eagerly desired at all the social 
occurrences. They would confess themselves that they are 
encouraged to lead very empty and thoughtless lives. I 
venture to hope that our Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion with its Bible reading has been of some use to some of 
them. The only two unmarried girls in the place joined us. 
. . . And in our day China is opening. The Chinese young 
woman in her soft and brilliant dress, with her broad brows 
and her skilful fingers, is about to step upon the world's 
stage. She has a natural love for going about and seeing 
what is new. She would travel more now if she could be 
sure of her inn. The time may soon come when the Young 
Women's Christian Association home, on native lines, will 
be added to our missionary agencies, and be to travelers 
what at present our boarding schools are to students. 

Nearly a score of years passed before this hope was 
realized. 

When the honorary secretary of the Canton Branch 
forwarded this account, there were three other small 
branches in China, likewise of English speaking ladies, 
in Shanghai, Foochow and Hong Kong : the latter was 
the most vigorous and had formed a Chinese branch 
of forty members. 

Foochow was supposed to be the first place where 
Chinese women students started their own Association 
by formal adoption of b. constitution. This was in 
the Methodist School and Seminary in December, 
1898, through the help of Mr. Fletcher S. Brockman, 
national secretary of the Young Men's Christian As- 
sociations of China. This little band of girls faith- 
fully kept the Morning Watch and found out many 
ways of showing Christ's spirit in the day schools 
around and in the hospital. 



S06 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

The China National Committee received Miss Ber- 
ninger in November, 1903, and after a year which she 
spent in language study, they were able to reorganize 
the Shanghai Association and open a house on the 
Yang tze poo Road, near the cotton mills. The girls 
and women employed there in western processes of 
manufacture took very kindly to the western ideas of 
Christian friendliness as expressed in this branch. 
Sometimes more than four hundred visitors dropped 
in to see Miss Berninger during an ordinary week and 
once during the first sixteen days after her return 
from vacation she made 1,088 callers welcome. In the 
autumn of 1905 A. Estella Paddock arrived as the 
first national secretary. 

Miss Reynolds in her oriental tour of 1900 met with 
the pioneer Association of Japan, that of Yokohama, 
and with other ladies keen on calling an American 
secretary for work among the girls of government 
schools, alumnae of mission schools and girls in fac- 
tories. An experienced American secretary replied, 
but not from the United States. A. Caroline Mac- 
Donald, city secretary of the Dominion Council of 
Canada, offered to go, and the Canadian Association 
with a generosity amounting to sacrifice, let her go 
out in 1904 and generously supported her as national 
secretary of a sister country. Theresa Morrison was 
the first secretary from this side of the border. She 
went out in 1903. 

Japan is rich in native leaders; Miss Michi Kawai 
is the Japanese active member of the World's Com- 
mittee and Miss Ume Tsuda, the leading woman in 



GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 307 

the Japanese world of education, is president of tlie 
Tokyo Association. Both were college students in the 
United States. Even as far back as 1907, when 
women from other oriental lands met in Tokyo in the 
eighth "World's Student Christian Federation Con- 
ference, they recognized that the national work would 
not bear the hall marks of Canada or the United 
States or of any foreign country, but would be dis- 
tinctly Japanese. Action and reaction are equal. 

As calendars go, it was half way between the Paris 
World's Conference in June, 1906, which discussed 
with utmost elaboration the lines for demarcation be- 
tween church missions and missionaries supported by 
Christian Associations, and the extension of the 
young Women's Christian Association into other 
lands, and the organization of the present national 
movement with a foreign department on a par with the 
home work, in December, 1906, that the first Amer- 
ican secretary, Emma Jean Batty, took her departure 
for South America. Like all American secretaries, 
except those in India, she was confronted by a new 
language, but the first months were occupied with re- 
organization of the Buenos Aires Association for Eng- 
lish speaking girls, which dated from 1890, and 
search for a central building. Six tiny rooms, up a 
flight of seventy-two stairs, were used as a boarding 
home, where seven regular members of the family 
hospitably made room for frequent transient guests 
and more than a score took luncheon daily, and in 
seasonable weather both English and Spanish speak- 
ing girls came in for Bible classes. Exorbitant 



308 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

rents have always made finding a location a serious 
problem. 

From the United States the pioneer Association 
secretaries went out to Turkey in 1913 as the pioneers 
had gone to China in 1903 and to South America in 
1906. And again like Miss Berninger in Shanghai, 
Frances Gage had once been a missionary in Turkey 
in Asia. She had a fine background of language and 
customs. Anna Welles, appointed to student work 
in Constantinople at the same time, had been for 
some years a resident of Paris and an active force in 
the Student Hostel. 

The great war which began in 1914 not only cur- 
tailed the usual work in South America and Turkey, 
but called out the Association forces into necessary 
relief measures. New opportunities of this kind have 
also been responded to by the Associations in India. 

Ten newly appointed secretaries went out in 1915, 
two to India, one to Japan, and seven to China. In 
these three countries the summer conferences have 
come to be spiritual power stations as in the older As- 
sociation lands. 

The building era has come to Japan and China as 
to India. Through the combined efforts of the Japan 
National Committee and the Pacific Coast Field Com- 
mittee, the greater part of the money needed for the 
Tokyo Building has been secured and the building 
was opened in the autumn of 1915. 

In Shanghai arrangements have been made with the 
Southern Methodist Mission for land and buildings 
which enabled the national and local work to take ad- 




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a 
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GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 309 

vanee steps such as the organization of a Physical 
Training School for Chinese women, which opened 
October, 1915. For this the Director of Physical Ed- 
ucation for Women at the University of Wisconsin, 
Abby Shaw Mayhew, had gone out in 1912, and Ying 
Mei Chun had returned in 1913 after thorough pro- 
fessional preparation in the United States. Secre- 
tarial residences in Canton and Foochow had also 
been provided. 

Foreign Associations seem much more a part of the 
American sisterhood than they could otherwise seem 
even with secretaries going out and returning on fur- 
lough, because students from Oriental, Latin Amer- 
ican and other foreign countries are studying in 
colleges, universities, preparatory and professional 
schools all over the United States. They are members 
of student Associations and guests at summer confer- 
ences as well as at special functions which Mrs. Helen 
Gould Shepard and other members of the foreign de- 
partment have arranged. 

That summer of 1900, when one picked up the 
morning paper with reluctance, fearing to see that 
still more missionaries had been borne down by the 
fury of the anti-foreign outbreak in China, that sum- 
mer when Christians, wherever gathered, in church or 
camp, almost sought to dictate to God for a speedy 
end to the struggle, brought forth a harvest in the 
fall of 1914, which would never have been dreamed 
of in those days of weeping — twelve Chinese girls ar- 
rived in the party of students sent to this country by 
their government for education in different subjects. 



310 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

And the money to be drawn upon for ten of these 
bursaries was the indemnity fund granted by China 
to the United States for those losses in 1900 and re- 
turned by our government to the Chinese treasury. 
In these years the Young Women 's Christian Associa- 
tion has so fitted in among things Chinese that it was 
the China National Committee which was entrusted 
with administering the examinations and arranging 
the departures, and the National Board of the United 
States which received them here at the Training 
School building, telegraphed about admission to the 
desired schools, and stood by during the students' in- 
evitable fall shopping. Best of all since the Associa- 
tion is only a department of the church, it was learned 
that ten of these students had come from mission 
schools, that all the indemnity students were Chris- 
tians, and two of them were pastors' daughters. 

Still other countries turn their eyes to America 
when seeking executive officers. In the British Amer- 
ican Association established in Paris in 1904, under 
the inspiration of Mrs. Grace Whitney Evans Hoff, 
first president of the Detroit Association, the staff has 
been almost continuously made up of Americans at 
the main building, long known at No. 5 Rue de Turin, 
and at the Paris Student Hostel which has been, since 
1906, the shadow of a rock in a weary land to women 
studying under the faculties of the Universities and 
those others who knew neither where to look for tui- 
tion nor abiding place. Through the World's Stu- 
dent Christian Federation certain American secre- 
taries or volunteer workers studying abroad have co- 



GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 311 

operated with continental women students in univer- 
sity advance steps. 

Even before Australasia had any regular national 
confederation, Adelaide called an American secretary, 
Esther L. Anderson, who went out in 1907, to be fol- 
lowed in 1911 by Helen F. Barnes as secretary of the 
National Association formed four years previous. 

From all the five countries where the American 
foreign department has sent out secretaries, students 
have come to the Training School, and from Canada, 
France, Russia, South Africa, Finland, Norway, 
Switzerland, and Great Britain students have come 
also, for observation and training. They aim not to 
transplant but to select some of the ideas for grafting 
into either older or younger Association growths. 

In thinking of the World's Association which bands 
all these lands together, one notices how stages of 
progress are marked unconsciously by the successive 
World's Conferences. The first met in London from 
June 14 to 18, 1898, at the invitation of the World's 
Executive Committee, it is true, but in a way it was 
the British Association asking their sisters to visit 
them, since hospitality was offered in private homes 
for some days before and after the conference proper ; 
204 of the registered delegates were from Great Brit- 
ain, the other 192 came, nineteen from India, four- 
teen from the United States, thirteen from Sweden, 
^Ye from Italy, three from Canada, one from Nor- 
way — these were the seven regularly affiliated coun- 
tries — and one or more from each of eleven additional 
continental and extra European lands; and all the 



312 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

program sessions were in English, although in the 
business meetings there was much informal translat- 
ing by the presiding officers, and in the devotional 
meetings there were prayers in many tongues that 
helped to make Pentecost and the Whitsuntide season 
very real. The English ladies realized the diversity 
of administration with such delicacy that the com- 
munion service was not a stated part of the program, 
but was held the morning after adjournment lest any 
might fear they had been forced to accept the ritual 
of an alien state church. 

It was in a way a retrospective conference, for few 
of the 1898 delegates had been in that little group 
which in 1892 had decided that the time was ripe to 
effect world federation. Still smaller was the group 
to which the drafting of the constitution had been re- 
ferred. And even in those countries (four at the 
outset, three in the next four years), which had legally 
adopted the proposed constitution through action of 
conventions or executive committees, the members at 
large were not very familiar with the scheme, and 
much explanation of that action was sought and was 
graciously and patiently given. Another link with 
the past was the reception at Exeter Hall tendered by 
Sir George Williams, the founder of the whole Chris- 
tian Association movement, upon whom Queen Vic- 
toria had conferred knighthood in 1894 when the par- 
ent London Young Men's Christian Association cele- 
brated its Jubilee by entertaining the World's Con- 
ference at the British capital. 

Yet the deliberations were all constructive. It 



GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 313 

would hardly seem, looking back to the morning when 
the constitution was adopted, that any delegates 
would object to the first Article: *'Name, This or- 
ganization shall be called the World's Young Wom- 
en's Christian Association," but one delegate rose to 
protest on the grounds that Christians are to flee from 
the World, the Flesh and the Devil. But she was 
fully content when reminded that *'God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son." 

The recommendation of an International Week of 
Prayer brought most keenly to mind the geographical 
differences of Northern and Southern hemispheres, 
which must be observed even when people's hearts are 
all at one. October was proposed, then November. 
This was satisfactory except to South India, which 
would be in the monsoon then. But India's large 
delegation undertook to bear with this inconvenience 
and the date, which has never been changed, was 
agreed upon. The designs for a world's badge were 
also presented then and every one knows the incident 
relative to the language of the inscription. Around 
the circle of the globe the world's motto was to be 
printed. But in what language? Should it be a 
separate tongue for every country? That would not 
be a uniform universal badge. A Scotch mind, 
trained to philosophical niceties, suggested printing 
the motto in the original Hebrew of Zechariah iv, 6, 
and each wondered that she herself had not hit upon 
so happy a solution. 

One cannot forget the social meetings: that at the 
heart of London, the Mansion House, when the Lord 



314 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Mayor and Lady Mayoress received the delegates in 
pomp and circumstance, and as soon as seats were 
taken for the program, an honorable attendant lifted 
the mighty gold chain of office from the mayor's neck 
and he listened with the others to the remarkable ad- 
dress of Isabella Bird Bishop, Fellow of the Royal 
Geographical Society, and to the other speakers of 
the evening; that at the heart of England, when by 
train and char-a-hancs we journeyed to a glorious 
country estate and then sat under the shade of a cen- 
tury old tree to listen to a Bible reading by one of 
the hosts; that at the heart of the British Empire, 
when we were received by royalty in the Dean 's Gar- 
den at "Windsor and stood at divine service in St. 
George's chapel, and walked through state apartments 
and listened to a message sent from Victoria, Queen 
of England and Empress of India. 

And now came Stockholm, 1914. Again there was 
royal recognition. Again there were delightful ex- 
cursions, but here there were only 325 from the en- 
tertaining country in proportion to 463 from twenty- 
two other countries. Each of the eighteen national 
Associations was represented, several of them far be- 
yond voting capacity, but the members were welcomed 
as visiting delegates. The program was as interna- 
tional as the delegations. Sweden generously permit- 
ted the use of French, German, and English as the 
official languages and was content to have only the 
public addresses interpreted into Swedish. There was 
a union Communion service on Sunday, and whereas 
in the immediately preceding conferences the sacra- 



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Clarissa H. Spencer, 
General Secretary of the World's Committee 



GIRLS IN OTHER COUNTRIES 315 

ment had been offered by clergy of three church bod- 
ies, that delegates might receive it each after her own 
custom, this time all partook together of the com- 
munion after the Lutheran order, as administered 
by clergymen of the Swedish National Church, and 
all the children of the Heavenly Father were together 
in their Father's house and at His table. Previous 
conferences had discussed matters of organization. 
The Stockholm Conference dwelt, it is true, with ad- 
justments that come from growth and national ex- 
pansion, but the conference theme reduced the organ- 
ization to the place of a necessary intermediary. This 
theme was stated as, *'The Unfolding of the True 
Plan for Woman in God's Purpose for the World." 
There was appeal made for public service, for Chris- 
tian women to take their due share of the municipal 
work of their nations, but the supreme obligation 
laid upon the women assembled in that conference 
was the winning of the individual soul for the King- 
dom of God. About 800 delegates represented about 
670,000 members in all parts of the world. It is a 
beginning. 

One sentence phrased by Dr. A. Johnston Ross 
stands ever as an explanation of the close relation de- 
sired between the girls and women in other lands and 
the members of the Young Women's Christian Associ- 
ations of the United States of America. 

It is only when that mystical collectivism of the East, 
and the individualism of the West, and the strenuous gravity 
of the North and the tender passion of the South, have all 
been brought in together to study the mind of Jesus, that 
we shall be able to understand what God has given us in 
Him. 



w 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE SECRETARIES 

**"^ "^ yHY do you say 'secretaries'?'' is a ques- 
tion repeatedly asked by people un- 
familiar with Association traditions. 
That was the title used in calling the first person to 
spend his whole time in Christian Association work 
and receive a salary for his services. 

George Williams and his colleagues could awaken 
interest in personal Christianity among the young 
men in their own drapery establishments, they could 
project plans outside, they could make their Sun- 
days the longest working days of the week, but when 
by 1845 the Hitchcock-Eogers example had been fol- 
lowed in all parts of London and fourteen business 
houses had branches, there must be a man free to go 
about, to execute as well as to devise plans, to look 
after affairs on week days as well as Sundays. 

J. H. Tarlton, a city missionary who had been con- 
ducting morning worship for the employes of Hitch- 
cock-Rogers, seemed suitable as this salaried organiz- 
ing secretary or missionary, and he was asked 

To act as assistant secretary, to attend all general meet- 
ings of the Association, to assist in conducting services in 
houses when they want help; to establish and render as 
efficient as possible district Associations; to form by com- 

316 



THE SECRETARIES S17 

mimicating with Christian young men in the large towns 
and cities of the Kingdom, branch Associations (it may 
sometimes be necessary that he should visit young men in 
illness) ; and make himself generally useful among the class 
to which his efforts will be directed, by pointing them to 
"the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the 
world." 

He was evidently a secretary, a unifying force, a chap- 
lain, an organizer, a friend to young men, a general 
factotum and an evangelist. His sphere was not only 
London but any part of the United Kingdom. Mr. 
Williams is said to have supplied most of the ideas 
and much of the enthusiasm while Mr. Tarlton car- 
ried them into effect so he was evidently an adminis- 
trator also. Little is said about his duties as host, 
and as the London Association was housed its first 
five years in a room in a hotel, those were probably 
so incidental that no one considered them worthy of 
mention. 

But in America the woman secretary was first of 
all a hostess, even though like Mary Foster in Boston 
in 1866, the realm over which she presided was only 
two rented rooms. Many of the employed officers 
elsewhere in early years were happy to welcome girls 
to the one room which for utility eclipsed the cottage 
furniture which Goldsmith says ** contrived a double 
debt to pay, ' ' for this one room, bounded on the north 
by a desk, on the east by a piano, on the south by a 
gas stove, and on the west by a reading table, was 
office, employment bureau, audience room, noon rest 
parlor and library, all in one. When the boarding 
home was the dominant feature, the superintendent 



S18 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

of the home was also manager of the employment 
bureau and organizer of other departments of work. 
The records of the Young Ladies' Branch of the La- 
dies' Christian Association show that Mrs. M. C. 
Uhler, the clergyman's widow who was their first sec- 
retary, receiveld $50 per month. This was a maxi- 
mum wage for a long period for positions where no' 
living was provided. 

Traveling secretaries from 1886 on were evangel- 
ists, advisers, correspondents, organizers, too, though 
curiously enough Nettie Dunn, the pioneer traveling 
secretary, organized no Associations whatever during 
her first year of office. Visitation claimed all her 
time. Most of the state workers' visits were made to 
colleges and the secretary was paid a small salary 
and expenses of board, whenever hospitality was not 
offered. 

At the first national convention at Lake Geneva, in 
1886, there were no secretaries present, because there 
was none in the movement at that time. Three years 
later nine of the seventy-four delegates to the second 
national convention in Bloomington were secretaries, 
one national, four state, three local city. They found 
time for a little conference together before the con- 
vention began, for it has always been recognized that 
the distinction between volunteer and professional 
work is genuine. The volunteer worker selects the 
task for which she is naturally fitted, and stays by it 
as long and does as much or as little as devotion and 
circumstances and other claims allow. Her service 
may strike any note of the Association scale. The 



THE SECRETARIES 319 

professional worker is held to a standard, the Associa- 
tion is her ranking claim, and she binds the separate 
notes into a harmonious chord. 

Every national Convention since then and many 
state meetings have been made the opportunity for 
formal or informal discussion of the problems for 
which these women had made themselves responsible 
in becoming salaried workers in the Young Women's 
Christian Associations. 

After the organization Convention of 1906 there 
remained for a three days' conference at the Park 
Avenue Hotel, New York City, one hundred and 
forty-nine superintendents, secretaries, clerks, and di- 
rectors of departments, for three days of acquaintance 
and inspiration. Miss Dodge explained what ^'Coop- 
eration of the Secretaries in the Development of the 
New Movement" would mean, and there were other 
speakers. 

The Minneapolis meeting of secretaries following 
the second national Convention claims to have 
started the immediate advance in girls' work through 
the powerful addresses delivered on these topics, The 
Importance of the Study of Adolescence, How a Girl's 
Early Belief May Be Developed Through the Student 
Association into Mature Christian Faith, The Girl 
in the City High School, in the Private School, in the 
Small Town High School, The Cooperation of City 
and Student Associations in Developing and Training 
Individual Girls, What Has Led the Young Men's 
Christian Association to Inaugurate Its Present Work 
for Boys. At this conference also the beginnings of 



320 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

county work were made the basis of a morning pro- 
gram as suggestive as it was absorbing. 

How the Young Women's Christian Association 
Can Meet the Appeal of the Times in Its Secretarial 
Work was the theme of the Indianapolis Secretaries' 
Conference of 1911, following the third national Con- 
vention, and the theme was treated through commis- 
sions on city and student problems which sent out 
their findings to members in advance, so that discus- 
sion could be instant and intelligent. The debate of 
five years concerning the name of this body was set- 
tled in favor of the progressives when the constitu- 
tion was adopted. 

The name of this Association shall be the Association of 
Employed Officers of the Young Women's Christian Asso- 
ciations of the United States of America. 

The object shall be study and conference concerning the 
questions that affect the efficiency of the salaried staff of 
the Young Women's Christian Associations. 

Thus this gatliering of three hundred members de- 
cided to enlarge the terminology so as to describe the 
whole staff, not only that section known as secretaries. 
The link between the United States and other coun- 
tries was seen in the constitution's provision that em- 
ployed officers trained in America, as well as outgoing 
workers, could be active members while serving As- 
sociations affiliated with the World's Association. 

The importance of the technical department was 
seen by provision for sectional organization when the 
department directors desiring such a branch consti- 
tute one-tenth of the paid up membership. Under 



THE SECRETARIES 321 

this provision the directors of physical education at 
once formed a department organization. 

O wad some power the giftie gie us 
To see oursel's as ithers see us! 
It wad frae monie a blunder free us, 
and foolish notion! 

This was the theme of the Richmond Conference 
of Employed Officers in 1913, and Church, Social Serv- 
ice and Student criticisms were presented. But the 
consciousness of helpless ignorance on the questions 
considered by the Commission on Social Morality had 
led the Committee to invite Dr. Richard C. Cabot to 
offer a course of three lectures on The Consecration 
of Affections. The sessions of the conference are al- 
ways closed and the verbatim reports are circulated 
only among members, but the addresses by Dr, Cabot 
could not be churlishly kept by the five hundred mem- 
bers of the Employed Officers' Association. The Na- 
tional Board printed them in a small book, ''The 
Christian Approach to Social Morality" and in Dr. 
Cabot's larger book, ''What Men Live By," the ideas 
which set the workers at Richmond to thinking those 
April days, have now become current throughout the 
reading world. 

Asilomar was the scene of the next conference. A 
Commission on the Secretary's Efficiency reported on 
the physical, intellectual, social, professional, spir- 
itual and economic aspects of the question. Una 
Saunders, executive of the Dominion Council of Can- 
ada, gave a series of addresses on The Woman Move- 
ment, Mabel Cratty, another series on Women Work- 



322 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

ing Together, and Anna V. Rice two talks on the Re- 
ligious Trend of the Times. Michi Kawai spoke 
Sunday morning when the auditorium was dedicated. 
The beauty, retirement and sense of proprietorship at 
Asilomar made for a poise of mind suitable for reflec- 
tion and decision. These recommendations were 
adopted. 

In the light of what we have heard these last two days, 
we who are present realize afresh the claims of the King- 
dom of God. We recognize that the mere passive accept- 
ance of these claims is not adequate, but that day by day 
and year by year we must face the issues involved in making 
ttie Kingdom of Grod a reality, and having faced these, de- 
termine our course and act. 

Our committee would therefore urge: That we here as- 
sembled dedicate again our lives to the bringing in of the 
Kingdom of God, cost what it may, and that we endeavor, 
through the power and might that come from Bible study, 
and the knowledge that comes from reading and discussion, 
and the daily practice of meeting the moral challenge which 
is never absent from responsibility, to make ourselves fit 
leaders of women. 

That other employed officers aside from secretaries 
are recognized as practising their professions within 
the Young Women's Christian Association is evi- 
denced by the system of training of the National 
Board. As soon as the preparatory Training Centers 
had been well set up and the second class graduated 
from the National Training School, a study was made 
of Association education for physical directors and 
a six weeks' summer course planned for 1911 in con- 
nection with Teachers' College, Columbia University, 
which put a physical director of both Association and 
academic experience, Abby Shaw Mayhew, in their 




Mabel Cratty, 
General Secretary of the National Board 



THE SECRETARIES 823 

regular summer faculty. To this summer school was 
transferred from the Field Committees the prepara- 
tory work for student secretaries. A Training Cen- 
ter course for secretaries in city colored branches was 
also introduced, since most of the candidates were 
teachers and could not make use of the Training Cen- 
ters conducted during the school year. The plans for 
1912 were much the same. 

But in 1913 the National Training School had 
moved into its magnificent new building where more 
serious academic work could be undertaken in the 
summer school. An independent faculty was made 
up of professors and instructors from recognized 
schools of physical education, who gave both theoret- 
ical and practical courses of study. An even larger 
group of salaried officers were the superintendents 
and matrons of Association residences and lunchroom 
and cafeteria directors, hence a short advanced course 
of four weeks in Household Economics was added to 
the other three departments in 1914. The season of 
1915 followed the same divisions. 

In the meantime women who had been on local 
supervisory staffs from one to twenty-two years, and 
scores of women tested through other experience, had 
been enriching their lives through the full academic 
year of the regular graduate National Training School 
course. The United States has never usurped inter- 
national rights, but owing to the commonly accepted 
business and professional status of women in America 
and the recognition of salaried employment in the 
Young Women ^s Christian Association as a profes- 



324 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

sion ranking with teaching and the newer forms of 
social service, technical training was more advanced 
here than in any other country, not even excepting 
England, where the location of the World's Head- 
quarters would make an international school most con- 
venient. 

Because of its graduate character in relation to the 
preparatory Training Centers the National Training 
School does not emphasize practical work. Its aca- 
demic course and the observation of and general par- 
ticipation in Association activities are sufficient to fill 
a student's time in New York and the vicinity. 

The five semesters in Gramercy Park before it was 
announced that the Training School was to be given 
a new home, were long enough to teach very forcibly 
the requirements for a model building. The school 
must be residential, there must be reception rooms, and 
offices, library, large and small lecture rooms, sem- 
inar room, there must be single rooms for students, 
accommodation for faculty and administration staff, 
a common living room, a dining room large enough 
for the occupants of all bedrooms and for additional 
guests, and amid all other considerations in construc- 
tion and equipment, the health and safety of the fam- 
ily must be kept in mind. All this and more, too, was 
granted in the eleven story headquarters building, in 
its new quarters at 135 East 52nd Street, New York 
City, in which the fifth academic year opened Septem- 
ber, 1912. 

The endowment which every college has learned to 
expect is yet to be provided. Two small bequests to 



THE SECRETARIES S25 

The American Committee transferred to the National 
Board were at once appropriated toward the support 
of this professional school, and one handsome gift was 
made to the library by Mr. and Mrs. L. Wilbur 
Messer of Chicago. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

A PROPHET AMONG WOMEN 

AN institution is distressed by change; it fears 
disturbance and disintegration. A movement 
craves change; in this way it will attain to 
progress and achievement. Miss Dodge had repeat- 
edly said that she would continue as President of the 
National Board not longer than a ten years' term, but 
her co-workers refused to listen. Her power of close 
observation was exceeded only by her power of a long 
look ahead. Everybody had confidence that the 
Young Women's Christian Associations of the United 
States would be moving, and moving in the right di- 
rection, so long as she was president. But a higher 
form of confidence yet was to be revealed by the Amer- 
ican Association members; it was faith to continue 
building on the foundation she had laid. 

December of 1914 at headquarters was full of plans 
for the coming Convention in Los Angeles in 1915, 
and with preparations for the Panama-Pacific Ex- 
position. Miss Dodge had attended all the Conven- 
tions—New York, 1906, St. Paul, 1909, Indianapolis, 
1911, Richmond, 1913, and was planning for the Cal- 
ifornia journey, making Association visits en route. 
She presided at the December board meeting ; she met 

326 






DeceDber 16, 1914 



liy dear Miss Thoburn: 

It is a pleas lae tc think that we are co*^orlEer8 
and I feel very cloeeto my friends these days. It is near 
the close of the year, the eighth of our new Association move* 
ment. As we ai'e entering into a new year, end the one when 
we are to have a Conventicn, I want to write to all of you 
vho are partners with me in our work. We are national and 
have to consider those who work in the North, South, East 
and West; the girls in industry, the city girl, the country, 
the student, end the girls io other countiies as well as the 
strangers within our gates. Will you not write me your view 
of our organization, and how we can improve it? I know so 
veil the red tapism which we feel hampers us in our work, and 
how easy it would seem to vis to work alone and to have things 
Just as vre wish. I have felt this so often, and yet could 
we grow all over the country as we have grown without organi- 
'nation or red tapism? I would like you to send me con- 
structive criticism - any plan you would prefer to the one 
ve have appointee. I would like the criticism in writing. 
We may not. be able to adopt all the ideas but I would like as 
your leader to have your vie«-s and then I will want to confer 
with certain personally. As I say, we are co-laborers and 
you and I should freely talk things over. I am sorry I have 
other interests so cannot give the National Board all my time* 
I want 1915 to be a good year of growth and development. With 
freedom guarded by crganization and God's great help, we should 
do much during the coming year. I hope that a very happy 
New Tear will come to you all and that the spirit of peace and 
good will may be in our midst as it has been so wonderfully in 
the past. Please feel me your friend and companion in all 
the work. 

Faithfully yours. 



-^^tJLu^.S^^ 



President. 

Letter Sent by Miss Dodge to All the National 
Board Staff 



A PROPHET AMONG WOMEN S27 

with the staff the next day; she went to Boston for 
the meeting of the Board of Trustees of Constantino- 
ple College, of which she was president. On the 22nd 
of December she led the Christmas service in the as- 
sembly room at Headquarters, reading with her posi- 
tive glad emphasis, * ' Peace I leave with you, my peace 
I give unto you; let not your heart be troubled, neither 
let it be afraid. He that believeth shall not make 
haste. Rest and be still.'' **A wonderful Christmas 
to you, my friends,'' was her farewell word. Christ- 
mas fell on Friday that year and the next afternoon 
there was at her home one of the beautiful Christmas 
parties of Oriental students whom she loved to en- 
tertain. But she was unable to come downstairs to 
greet her guests. 

The next morning, Sunday, December 27, she was 
not, for God took her. 

When her hand was lifted, knowledge of the multi- 
fold activities of her busy years began to flood in. 
Such knowledge she had always suppressed and many 
of the daily papers searched their files almost in vain 
for printed announcement of her deeds or her bene- 
factions. But friends in every station in life con- 
tributed to make up the record which places her as 
a formative power second to no woman of this period 
except Florence Nightingale. She was a constructive 
pioneer in education for practical life. She initiated 
cooperation in social work; she led in the protection 
of women, and she introduced a Christian statesman- 
ship that works through college women in all lands 
for a society in which educated women must take a 



328 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

place nnconceived by any previous generation. 
''Probably no other woman in history has done so 
much for the direct uplift of young girls — always 
reaching out for the young girl. ' ^ Thus spoke a wise 
Christian woman of four score years when she heard 
of her death. 

The National Board had lost only one other member 
by death, Mrs. Malcolm D. Whitman, who died in 
December, 1909. As Janet McCook she was made a 
charter member of the Board when she was only 
twenty-four, but she embodied the four-fold ideal as 
few had ever done, through her beauty and vitality, 
her mental vigor, her personal charm, and the spirit- 
ual vision illuminated by obedience. Her Bible 
classes of her own friends in her own drawing-room, 
of the Barnard College Christian Association in her 
own Alma Mater, of groups of younger girls in New 
York City, and at Silver Bay Conferences, were re- 
nowned. The fruit of these classes was shown when 
one new phase of Association work after another was 
started in New York City by people to whom the 
Young Women's Christian Association was totally un- 
known or hopelessly unappealing until she revealed 
its scope and possibilities. 

As Mrs. Marshall 0. Roberts was first directress of 
the Ladies' Christian Union, and after her death the 
title was not used, so the National Board despaired 
of ever finding any one to fill Miss Dodge's place. 
They recognized that she had given the presidency a 
content impossible to demand of any successor, and 
they divided the duties of the office she had held, ere- 



A PROPHET AMONG WOMEN 329 

ating a new office, Chairman of the Executive Com- 
mittee, to which committee many business details had 
always been referred by the Board. In the winter 
of 1915 they elected two charter members of the board 
to these positions: Mrs. Robert E. Speer was made 
President of the National Board, and Mrs. John 
French, Chairman of the Executive Committee. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

MOTTOES AND SPIRIT 

IN those earliest days when Miss Robarts was seek- 
ing to make the tiny little Association known in 
order to increase the number of its praying mem- 
bers, and to unite them locally into bands under lead- 
ers whom she named their secretaries, she sent out 
modest leaflets from time to time, undated, although 
from the context the dates have been somewhat ac- 
curately assigned by her co-workers. Perhaps about 
1860 there appeared the paper headed 

Young Women's Cheistian Association 
Prayer Union 

Motto: "Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, 
saith the Lord of Hosts." — ^Zechariah iv, 6. 

One sentence read, **The Young "Women's Chris- 
tian Association affords opportunities of work for God 
within the reach of all, and the Prayer Union binds 
the workers together, and is the source of all strength 
and success in the work of the Young Women 's Chris- 
tian Association.'' Nine suggested means of useful- 
ness were cited, beginning with ' ' Example in conduct, 
dress, etc., to manifest Christian consistency and sepa- 
ration from the world,'' and ending, **The encour- 
agement of total abstinence principles." 

When the Prayer Union and Institute Branches of- 

330 



MOTTOES AND SPIRIT 331 

ficially united in 1877, after many individuals had 
been personally connected with both, it was decided 
to adopt some uniform nomenclature. They called 
** members" those who joined the Prayer Union, those 
who had entered into a living union with Christ by 
faith, and taken as * ' The only principle of action the 
constraining power of His love shed abroad in the 
heart by the Holy Ghost." Those who could not as 
yet say that they desired to be absolutely and avow- 
edly on the side of Christ were called Associates. 
The Prayer Union motto was retained for the "mem- 
bers," and for the Associates Mrs. Pennefather, in 
1877, chose the general motto, ' ' By love serve one an- 
other" (Galatians v, 13). The Total Abstinence 
diamond shaped badge was much admired and finally 
made the general badge, with the general motto upon 
it. This blue enamel diamond pendant bearing the 
words, *'By love serve," has been worn in every part 
of the world. 

"When the Young Women's Christian Association 
Quarterly first appeared in Chicago in 1888, the 
words, * * Not by might nor by power but by my spirit, 
saith the Lord of Hosts, ' ' were printed in the heading 
of the little eight page paper, and elsewhere there 
was a note explaining that that was the motto adopted 
by the Associations afiiliated with the National Com- 
mittee. Consequently, in 1894, when the World's As- 
sociation was being formed of only four national com- 
mittees, these two countries might naturally suggest 
the motto already dear to them as a suitable keynote 
for the combined movement. 



332 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

The Honorable Emily Kinnaird, in speaking to a 
company of British and Americans that year, drew 
attention to the motto already adopted by both con- 
tinents and expressed the hope that the Association 
would ever go forward in the strength and inspira- 
tion of such a motto. As is known, the first World 's 
Conference adopted these words upon the official 
badge, and this text of warning and promised strength 
has appeared upon official papers ever since. 

At the Montreal Conference of the Women's and 
Young Women's Christian Associations in 1897, a 
committee on a badge for members and Associations 
connected with the International Board brought in a 
design which bore on an enclosed triangle the words, 
'*By love serve," which was accepted as the motto. 

Even the people who do not care for badges appre- 
ciate the stable fact of which the badge is the outward 
symbol, and it was with great satisfaction that the 
members at large learned that the National Board had 
chosen from the tenth chapter of the Gospel accord- 
ing to John, these words as a part of the official seal. 

**I am come that they might have life, and that 
they might have it more abundantly. ' ' 

This became also the motto of the entire national 
organization. 

The previous mottoes referred to the Christian 
woman undertaking something for her Lord and Mas- 
ter. They spoke of human deficiency and divine 
power, of human love poured out in divine service. 

The new motto speaks of Christ's own thought for 
the girls at the beginning of life, relates Him to them 



MOTTOES AND SPIRIT 333 

and them to Him, and opens to them a future exceed- 
ing abundant, above all that they could ask or think. 
In the decades ahead, as in the five decades already 
compassed, Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday, and for- 
ever, can be recognized as the central figure of the 
Young Women's Christian Association. 

Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning, 
Christ the beginning fob the end is Christ. 



I 



APPENDIX 



I 



CHRONOLOGY 

1844. June 6. London Young Men's Christian Association 

organized. 
1851. December 9. Boston, Mass., Young Men's Christian 

Association organized. 
1855. English Prayer Union formed. 

English Institute Branch formed by enlarging scope 

of Nurses' Home. 

1858. January. Students' Christian Association organized in 

the University of Michigan (not co-educational). 
October 12. Yoimg Men's Christian Association of the 

University of Virginia organized. 
Young Women's Christian Improvement Association 

started in the Home in London. 
-- November 24. Ladies' Christian Association organized 

in New York City. 

1859. Agitation for Young Women's Christian Association in 

Boston. 

1860. June 1. Boarding Home opened in Amity Place, New 

York City, by Ladies' Christian Association. 
Meetings held in New York factories by Ladies' Chris- 
tian Association. 

1861. Pall I\Iall Institute opened in London. 

1866. March 3. Boston Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion organized (name first taken in America). 

May. Rooms opened in Chauncey Street, Boston. 

Mary Foster became secretary of the Boston Associa- 
tion. 

Thursday evening prayer meeting in rooms of Boston 
Association. 

Singing taught in Boston Association. 

Name of Ladies' Christian Association changed to 
Ladies' Christian Union of New York City. 
337 



338 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

1867. April 23. Providence Women's Christian Association 

organized. 

June. Hartford organized Women's Christian Associa- 
tion. 

July 23. Providence Association opened combination 
Home. 

Pittsburgh Women's Christian Association organized. 

Astronomy and physiology taught in Boston Associa- 
tion. 

1868. February 19. Beach Street property occupied by Bos- 

ton Association. 

Dining room of Boston boarding home conducted on 
restaurant plan. 

Penmanship and bookkeeping taught in Boston Asso- 
ciation. 

March. Providence Association reorganized on protec- 
tive lines. 

June. Cincinnati Women's Christian Association or- 
ganized. 

November 10. Cleveland Women's Christian Associa- 
tion organized. 

December. St. Louis Women's Christian Association 
organized. 

1869. Botany taught in Boston Association. 

1870. February 10. Young Ladies' Branch of the Ladies' 

Christian Union of New York City organized by 
Mrs. Roberts (later Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation of City of New York ) . 

Wofnen's Christian Association of Dayton, Ohio, or- 
ganized. 

Women's Christian Association of Utica organized. 

Women's Christian Association of Washington organ- 
ized. 

Women's Christian Association of Buffalo organized. 

November, Women's Christian Association of Phila- 
delphia organized. 

1871. February. Women's Christian Association of German- 

town, Pa., organized. 
June 22. Women's Christian Association of Newark, 
N. J., organized. 



CHRONOLOGY 339 

October 9-10. National Conference of Women's 
Christian Association held at Hartford, Connecticut. 

Women's Christian Association of Springfield, Mass., 
organized. 

1872. February. Class in machine sewing conducted by New 

York City Association. 

Ella Doheny commenced Sunday afternoon Bible Class 
in New York City Association. 

Philadelphia Association opened restaurant for women. 

Hartford dedicated first building erected for such pur- 
poses. 

November 12. Young women's meetings for prayer 
began at Normal, Illinois. 

1873. January 19. Young Ladies' Christian Association of 

Normal, Illinois, organized by Normal School stu- 
dents. 

1874. Boston Association occupied Warrenton Street building. 
Sea Rest, at Asbury Park, N. J., opened as summer 

home of the Philadelphia Association. 
History taught in Boston Association. 
Telegraphy taught in Philadelphia Association. 

1875. C. V. Drinkwater became Superintendent in Boston. 
October 12-15. Women's Christian Association Con- 
ference became international. 

November 4. Young Ladies' Christian Association of 
Northwestern College (later Young Women's Chris- 
tian Association) organized. 

Exposition of Authors held in St. Louis. 

1876. October 17. Young Women's Christian Association or- 

ganized in Southern Illinois Normal University, Car- 
bondale. 
October 21. Yomig Women's Christian Association of 
Olivet College, Michigan, organized. 

1877. L^nion of Prayer Union and Institute Branches in 

London. 

Princeton University Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tion led in Intercollegiate Movement. 

October 30. Young Women's Christian Association of 
Lenox College, Hopkinton, Iowa, organized. 

Calisthenics taught in the Boston Association by one 
of the boarders in Warrenton Street Home. 



340 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

1878. Providence Association conducted summer home on 

Conanicut Island. 
Kensington and Crewel classes held by New York City 
Association. 

1879. Domestic Training School, Boston. 
Ladies' Cooking Classes, Boston. 

1880. Public School Cooking Class in Boston Association. 
Phonography, typewriting, photo negative, photo color- 
ing and painting on china classes in New York City 
Association. 

Young Ladies' Society of Co-workers organized in 
Doane College, Crete, Nebraska. ( 1883 changed to 
Young Women's Christian Association.) 

1881. February 20. L. D. Wishard spoke to the Young 

Ladies' Christian Association at Normal. 

April 23. New Constitution adopted by the Young 
Ladies' Christian Association of Normal. 

September 11. Name of Young Ladies' Christian As- 
sociation of Normal changed to Young Women's 
Christian Association. 

October. Committee on Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation work in colleges and seminaries appointed 
by the Sixth International Conference of Women's 
Christian Associations. 

St. Louis Association offered a public course of cook- 
ing lessons by Juliet Corson. 

Technical design and free hand enlarging taught in 
New York City Association. 

Little Girls' Christian Association in Oakland, Cali- 
fornia. 

1882. Boston Association sent class to Miss Allen's gym- 

nasium. 
Household Training School opened by St. Louis Asso- 
ciation. 

1883. Course of Emergency Lectures instituted by Boston. 
Baltimore opened rooms adapted for noon lunch as 

prominent feature. 

1884. Young Women's Christian Association of Pleasant Val- 

ley toAvnship, Johnson County, Iowa, organized. 
February 7-11. First State Young Women's Christian 



CHRONOLOGY S4I 

Association organized at Albion, Michigan conven- 
tion. 

February 14-17. State Young Women's Christian As- 
sociation of Ohio organized. 

November 15. Iowa State Young Women's Christian 
Association organized. 

December 8. Berkeley Street Building, Boston, dedi- 
cated. It contained the first Yoimg Women's Chris- 
tian Association gymnasium in America. 

United Central Council formed in Great Britain. 

1885. Kalamazoo, Michigan, Young Women's Christian Asso- 

ciation organized. 

Great Fair held by New York City Association. 

Travelers' Aid placards posted in London. 

Delegation from State .Associations attended Interna- 
tional Conference of the Women's Christian Associa- 
tions at Cincinnati. 

1886. Lawrence, Kansas, Young Women's Christian Associa- 

tion organized. 

March 30. Poughkeepsie Girls' Branch organized. 

"Noon Hour Rest" conducted by Poughkeepsie Associa- 
tion. 

July. Student Volimteer Movement for Foreign Mis- 
sions originated. 

August 6-12. National Association of the Young 
Women's Christian Associations of the United States 
formed at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. 

Mrs. John V. Farwell, Jr., elected president of the 
National Committee of Young Women's Christian As- 
sociations. 

December. Nettie Dunn became general secretary of the 
National Committee of Young Women's Christian As- 
sociations. 

1887. February. Bertha Van Vliet became secretary of the 

Poughkeepsie Girls' Branch. 

Ypsilanti, Michigan, Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion organized. 

Topeka, Kansas, Young Women's Christian Association 
organized. 



^ 



342 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Exhibit of class work in millinery and dressmaking 

held in Philadelphia. 
Self-Governing Club organized by Miss Dodge in the 

Baltimore Association. 
Calisthenics taught in New York City, Philadelphia, 

and Poughkeepsie. 
Hope Narey became gynmasium instructor in Boston — 

'88, physical director. 
July. Mary E. Blodgett became Travelers' Aid in 

Boston. 
October. Ida L. Schell became state secretary of Iowa. 
December. Nellie Kjaox became state secretary of Ohio. 

1888. St. Joseph, Missouri, Young Women's Christian Asso- 

ciation organized. 
Scranton, Penn., Young Women's Christian Association 

organized. 
Brinton Hall, Philadelphia, given for headquarters to 

the Women's Medical College Association. 
Physical education in Worcester, Scranton, Coldwatcr, 

Michigan, and Newburgh, N. Y. 
Current Events class held in Worcester. 
Advanced classes in cutting and fitting held by New 

York City Association. 
Boston Association opened School of Domestic Science. 
Young Women's Christian Association Quarterly pub- 
lished by the National Committee of Young Women's 

Christian Associations. 

1889. Constitution of the "National" Association of Young 

Women's Christian Associations changed to "Inter- 
national" to admit Associations in the British Prov- 
inces. 

First national gathering of secretaries at Bloomington. 

Young Women's Christian Association Quarterly 
changed to the Evangel. 

Branch Association opened by Baltimore. 

1890. Kansas City, Missouri, Young Women's Christian As- 

sociation organized. 
Mary S. Dunn became general secretary and physical 

director in Kansas City. 
Toledo, Ohio, Young Women's Christian Association 

organized. 



CHRONOLOGY 34S 

Trained attendants' class opened in Brooklyn. 

1891. March. The Cafeteria system introduced into the Kaa- 

sas City, Missouri, Association. 

Close Hall occupied by the joint Associations of the 
University of Iowa, Iowa City. 

Minneapolis Young Women's Christian Association or- 
ganized. 

The International Conference reorganized into the In- 
ternational Board of Women's Christian Associa- 
tions, in 1893 The International Board of Women's 
and Yoimg Women's Christian Associations. 

Mrs. C. R. Springer elected president of the Interna- 
tional Board. 

Summer Bible and Training School held at Bay View, 
Michigan. 

1892. Preliminary meeting of World's Young Women's Chris- 

tian Association in London. 

Summer Conference removed from Bay View, Michigan, 
to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. 

Abby S. Mayhew became physical director in Minne- 
apolis. 

Busy Girls' Half Hour established by Dayton in the 
National Cash Register works. 

1893. Northfield Summer Conference established. 

Exhibits at the World's Columbian Exposition by 
both National bodies. 

1894. April. Initial number of the "International Messen- 

ger" appeared. 

Organization of World's Young Women's Christian Aa- 
sociation. 

Annie M. Reynolds became general secretary of the 
World's Young Women's Christian Association. 

Agnes Gale Hill called to Madras, India. 

Toledo Association raised support for Foreign Secre- 
tary. 

Harlem Association Clubs, "Birthday Building," "Lit- 
erary" and "Annex Choral," organized. 

1895. World's Student Christian Federation formed. 
Industrial extension begun in Milwaukee. Maude 

Wolff, secretary. 



344, FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Mary Armstrong became general secretary at the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin. 

Colgate Chrysanthemum Club formed in Harlem Asso- 
ciation. 

1896. Summer Cottage on Genesee Lalce, Wisconsin, given to 

the Milwaukee Association. 

1897. Boston Association offered courses for Young Women's 

Christian Association secretaries. 
December 31, 1897, to January 2, 1898. Fillmore 
County, Minnesota, Convention. 

1898. First County Association organized. 

March. Dodge County (Minnesota) Young Women's 

Christian Association organized. 
First World's Conference fixed World's Week of Prayer 

in November and adopted motto and badge. 
Charlotte H. Adams became Religious Work director 

in Pittsburgh. 
/ 1899. International Committee of Young Women's Christian 

Associations became The American Committee of 

Young Women's Christian Associations, releasing 

Canada. 
American department of the World's Committee 

created. 
Dr. Anna L. Brown became Religious Work director in 

Boston. 

1900. Neva Chappell called to Minneapolis as extension 

secretary. 
Support of a national secretaryship assumed by one 
donor. 

1901. Headquarters opened by International Board at the 

Chautauqua, N. Y. Assembly Grounds. 
Milwaukee included a model housekeeping apartment 
in its new building. 

1902. Division of . Student and City Conferences at Silver 

Bay. 

1903. The Bulletin replaced the International Messenger as 

official organ of the "International Board." 
Headquarters opened by the International Board at the 

Southern Chautauqua, Mont Eagle, Tenn. 
Martha Berninger appointed first secretary to China. 
Theresa Morrison appointed first secretary to Japan. 



CHRONOLOGY S45 

1904. Secretaries' Training Institute opened in Chicago. 
Monaghan Mills Association opened in Greenville, S. C. 
Louisiana Purchase Exposition Travelers' Aid work 

instigated by International Board. 

1905. May 24. The Manhattan Conference considered union 

of the two National bodies. 
Woman's Department of the World's Student Christian 

Federation formed. 
Exposition Travelers' Aid Committee formed for Lewis 

and Clark Exposition at Portland. 
Swimming taught in pool in Buffalo and Montgomery. 
November 2-7. The 18th Biennial Conference of the 

International Board voted for union, Baltimore. 

1906. January 2-4. A special Convention of The American 

Committee Associations, Chicago, voted in favor of 

union. 
Emma J. Batty appointed first secretary to South 

America. 
December 5-6. First Convention of the Young 

Women's Christian Associations of the United States 

of America, New York City. 
December 7. Miss Grace H. Dodge elected President of 

the National Board, 

1907. February. Initial number of The Association Monthly 

appeared. 
The Studio Club of New York City opened rooms. 

1908. September 23. National Training School opened at 

No. 3 Gramercy Park. 
October 17. Woodford County, 111., Association organized. 
First Federation of Industrial Clubs formed in Detroit. 

1909. National organization completed at Second Biennial 

Convention, St. Paul. 
Organization of the Employed Officers Association. 
Employed Officers Association considered "Adolescence" 

as theme of their Minneapolis Conference. 

1910. Central Club for Nurses established in New York City. 
International Institute opened in New York City. 

1911. Boston Metropolitan Student work undertaken. 
April. Third Biennial Convention held in Indianapolis. 

1912. Annual members elected by Ohio and West Virginia 

Field Committee. 



346 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Camp Fire Girls' movement developed. 
Council of North American Student Movements formed. 
National Headquarters in New York City erected. 
New York City Metropolitan organization effected. 
September. The National Training School opened its 

fifth year in its new building, 135 East 52nd Street, 

New York City. 

1913. March. Initial number of the North American Stu- 

dent appeared. 

April. Fourth Biennial Convention held in Richmond. 

Certificate offered for Eight Week Clubs. 

June. Tenth Conference of the World's Student Chris- 
tian Federation met at Lake Mohonk, N. Y. 

Industrial Club Councils held at Altamont and Camp 
Nepahwin. 

Asilomar Conference Grounds opened. 

Frances C. Gage and Anna Welles appointed first secre- 
taries in Turkey. 

Campaign for $3,000,000 for Young Women's Christian 
Association buildings in New York City. 

1914. December 27. Miss Grace H, Dodge, deceased. 

1915. February 3. Mrs. Robert E. Speer elected President of 

the National Board. 

Headquarters and Club House erected by the National 
Board on the Panama-Pacific International Exposi- 
tion ground at San Francisco. 

May. Fifth Biennial Convention held in Los Angeles. 

First County Summer Conference, Conference Point, 
Lake Geneva. 



SOURCES AND GLOSSARY 



Chapter I 

Abbott, Edith. History of the Employment of Women in the 
American Cotton Mills. Journal of Political Economy, 
Vol. XVI, pp. 602-21; Vol. XVII, pp. 19-35. 

Child, Lydia Maria. Brief History of the Condition of Women 
in Various Ages and Nations. C. S. Francis Co., New 
York. 1849. 

Fairchild, James H. Oberlin, the Colony and the College. 
E. J. Goodrich, Oberlin. 1883. 

Lareom, Lucy. A New England Grirlhood. Houghton Mifflin 
& Co., Boston. 1889. 

Nearing, Scott, and N. M. S. Nearing. W^oman and Social 
Progress. MacMillan & Co., New York. 1912. 

Penny, Virginia. The Employment of Women. (No pub- 
lisher.) Boston. 1863. 

Taylor, James Monroe. Before Vassar Opened. Houghton 
Mifflin & Co., Boston. 1914. 

Chapter II 

Braithwaite, Robert. Life and Letters of Rev. William Penne- 
father. Robert Carter & Co., New York. 1878. 

Williams, J. E. Hodder. The Life of Sir George Williams. 
A. C. Armstrong Co., New York. 1906. 

Martin, Sir Theodore. The Life of H. R. H. the Prince Con- 
sort. Smith, Elder & Co., London. 1878. 

Moor, Lucy M. Girls of Yesterday and To-day. S. W. Part- 
ridge & Co., London. 1911. 

Stock, Eugene. History of the Church Missionary Society, 
London. 1899. 

347 



348 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Facsimile of title page of first report 

The First Report of the 

Young Men's 

Christian Association 

for the 

Improvement of the Spiritual Condition 

of Young Men Engaged in the 

Drapery and other Trades 

by the 

Introduction of Religious Services 

into 

Houses of Business 

Instituted in London 

June 6, 1844. 

Association Men. Vol. XXXIII, Number 10 (July, 1908), pp. 

457-459. 
Go Forward (1905). Historical papers by Mrs. M. M. Gordon, 

Lucy M. Moor, Jessie Coombs, etc. 
Sisters. Illustrated pamphlet of the British Jubilee, 1905. 

Prayer Union circular letters (No. 2 quoted above). 

No. 2. "To the Members of the Young Women's Christian 
Association." 

No. 3. "Young Women's Christian Association Prayer 
Union." 

No. 4. "Sketch of the Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion" (signed) E, R. 

"Young Women's Christian Association" (signed) Miss L. 
M. Moor. 

"Letter to Y. W. C. A, Provincial Workers." November 12, 
1884 (signed) Lucy M. Moor. 

F. R. Havergal. 

Other hymn writers connected with the British Associations 
were Emily Steele Elliott, who wrote, "Thou Didst Leave 
Thy Throne and Thy Kingly Crown"; Katherine Hankey, 
author of "Tell Me the Old, Old Story" and "I Love to 
Tell the Story"; and Mrs. Horatius Bonar, who wrote 
"Fade, Fade, Each Earthly Joy." 



SOURCES AND GLOSSARY 349 

Chapter III 

Cook, Sir Edward. The Life of Florence Nightingale. Mac- 
millan & Co., London. 1913. 

Fraser, Donald. Mary Jane Kinnaird. James Nisbet & Co., 
London. 1890. 

Hill, Georgiana. English Life from Mediaeval to Modern 
Times. R. R. Bensley & Son, London. 1896. 

Hodder, Edwin. The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of 
Shaftesbury. Cassell & Co., London. 1886. 

Nightingale, Florence. Notes on Nursing. D. Appleton & Co., 
New York. 1860. 

January, 1856 — Circular (signed) A. Kinnaird (2). 

June, 1856 — Circular (signed) A. Kinnaird. 

Undated — A. Kinnaird; name heads page as treasurer. 

1856 — Announcement of Home. 

1858 ( ? ) Announcement of Young Women's Christian Im- 
provement Association. 

May, 1860— Circular letter to members of Y. W. C. I. A. 
(signed) M. J. Kinnaird. 

July, 1861 — Announcement and circular of United Association 
for the Christian and Domestic Improvement of Young 
Women. President, the Earl of Shaftesbury. 

1861 — A Brief Sketch of the origin, aim and mode of con- 
ducting the Young Women's Christian Association and 
West London Home for Young Women engaged in houses 
of business. 

1871 — Pamphlet, "The Christian Association for Young 
Women." 

Later than 1877~Pamphlet, "Y. W. C. A. and Institute 
Union." 

London Times — August 15, 1911, Biographical article on 
Florence Nightingale. 

Go Forward— July, 1901, p. 164. 

Report of the North London Home, 51 Upper Charlotte St., 
for 1856, including Rules and Treasurer's statements. 

Same for 1857. 

First Report of United Association for Christian and Domestic 
Improvement of Young Women, 1862. 

London Young Women's Institute Union and Christian Asso- 
ciation. Report for year 1877. 



350 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Speech of the Earl of Shaftesbury (from 1881 report). 
Aiinual reports of later dates containing historical references. 

Chaptee IV 

Girls of Yesterday and To-day. 

Money — ^Townsend. The Story of the Girls' Friendly Society. 

Wells, Gardner, Darton & Co., London. 1913. 
"Y. W. C. A. Sketches." Illustrated pamphlet prepared for 

Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, 1897. 
Pamphlet— Ten Years' Record of the World's Y. W. C. A. 

1901. Annie M. Reynolds. 

Chapteb V 

Thompson, Joseph P. The Royalty of Faith — A meditation 
on the life of Mrs. Marshall O. Roberts. No Publisher. 
1875. 

Reports of the Ladies' Christian Union. 1859-1915. 

New York Christian Advocate — Nos. 46 to 141, cited Septem- 
ber 9, 1858. 

International Conference reports — 1871 et seq. 

Report of Ninth International Conference, 1887 — ^page 109. 

This antedates the first otherwise known record. The London 
Y. W. C. A. report for 1885 mentions regular visits begun 
April, 1885, in laundries in the west of London. 

The London report for 1888, however, speaks of a special 
Institute in South Belgravia, when the Y. W. C. A. began 
separate work among factory hands in 1872. 

Chaptee VI 

Morse, Richard O. History of the North American Young 
Men's Christian Associations. Association Press, New 
York. 1913. 

Putnam, James Jackson. Memoirs of Dr. James Jackson. 
Houghton & Mifflin, Boston. 1905. The Congregational 
Building was formerly the residence of Judge Jackson. 

The Watchman and Reflector. October 9, 1861. 

The Watchman and Reflector. January 15, 1852. 

Reports of International Conferences. 1871-1905. 

The International Messenger. 1894-1902. 



SOURCES AND GLOSSARY S51 

Boston reports from 1867-1915. Several of these, e.g. 25th 
and 40th, contain historical material. 

Announcements, circulars, prospectuses, etc. 

Letter from Wm. H. Cobb. Congregational Library. Histor- 
ical statement, C. V. Drinkwater. 

Chapteb VII 

Journal of the International W. C. A. Conference, 1871-1891. 

History pamphlet by Mrs. M. S. Lamson. 

Annual reports. Hartford, St. Louis, Cincinnati, New York 

City, etc., etc. 
Historical sketches in pamphlet or newspaper form. 
Occasional copies of Faith and Works. 

Chapter VIII 

Reports of the International Com m ittee of Y. W. C. A.'s, 1886- 

1891. 
Reports of State Associations, 1884 et seq. 
The Y. W. C. A. Quarterly, 1888-1889. The Evangel, 1889- 

1891. 
Reports, Circulars, etc. 
Historical material of local Associations, 
Model constitutions, 1, 2, 3 editions. 
Our Young Women, 1894, Toledo, Ohio, page 8. 

Chapteb IX 

Bevier and Usher. The Home Economics Movement. Whit- 
comb and Barrows, Boston. 1906. 

Journals of the International Conferences, 1891-1905. 

Annual Reports of The American Committee, 1891-1906. 

The International Messenger, 1894-1902. 

The Bulletin, 1903-1905. 

The Evangel, 1891-1906. 

State Convention Reports, 1891-1906. 

Reports of local Associations and various printed matter. 

Articles on Household Arts in Education, Physical Education, 
etc., in the Encyclopedia of Education. 

Campbell, Helen. "Certain Forms of Women's Work for 
Women." The Century Magazine, June, 1889. 



352 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Chapters X and XI 

History of the North American Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciations. 

Williams, Wolcott B. A History of Olivet College. No pub- 
lisher. Olivet, Mich. 1901. 

Leonard, Delavan L. The History of Carleton College. 
Fleming H, Revell, Chicago. 1904. 

Typewritten Minutes of the Y. W. C. A. of Normal, 111., from 
1872 to 1884. Also historical papers of various dates. 

Reports of The American Committee, 1886-1906. 

Journal of the International W. C. A. Conference, 1881-1891. 

Year Books of the International Committee Y. M. C. A. 

Y. W. C. A. State Committee Reports, 1884-1906. 

The College Bulletin of the International Committee, Y. M. 
C. A. 

The Y. W. C. A. Quarterly, 1888-1889, The Evangel, 1889-1906. 

World's Conference Reports, 1898 to 1906. 

Report of Ecumenical Missionary Conference. New York, 
1900. Volume I, page 47. 

Chapter XII 

The Evangel, June, 1898. 

State Y. W. -C. A. Reports, especially Iowa. 

Journal of the International Conferences of the W. C. A. 

Annual Reports, International Committee Y. W. C. A's., 1886- 

1891. 
Iowa State Notes, Y. M. C. A., 1887-1889. 
Historical Sketch of Johnson County Association. 
Report* of State Committee Y. M. C. A. of Iowa, 1886. 
Typewritten volumes of Memorabilia, by Robert Weidensall. 

Chapter XIII 

Journals of International Conferences of the W. C. A., 1871- 
1891. 

Chapter XIV 

Annual Reports, 1886-1906. 

Y. W. C. A. Quarterly, 1888-1889. The Evangel, 1889-1906. 
Typewritten history of the National Organization in India, 
Hon. E. Kinnaird and A. G. Hill. 



SOURCES AND GLOSSARY 353 

Girls of Yesterday and To-day. 

History of the North American Y. M. C. A, 

Resolutions from State Associations to W. C. A. Conference. 

Proposition carried by the Committee to Cincinnati, 1885. 

Report of same committee to the State Committees. 

Circular calling the Lake Geneva Convention. 

Autograph list of delegates at Lake Geneva, 1886. 

Pencil list of Associations in 1886, 

Circulars of the National Committee, International and Ameri- 
can Committees. 

Publication list of The International Committee, 1894. 

Pamphlets on Secretarial Training, Basis, Summer Confer- 
ences, etc. 

World's Committee Circulars. 

Historical pamphlets of the University of Michigan. 

Alumni Bulletins of the University of Virginia, Jan., 1909, 
October, 1910. 

Students fall campaign Handbooks. 

Letters from original Associations, etc, etc. 

Typewritten volumes of memorabilia of Robert Weidensall. 

State Committee constitutions, circulars, etc. 

The Lawrentian, May, 1884. Student publication, Lawrence 
University. 

Circular and constitution sent out by Mrs. Miller and Mr. 
Wishard. 

Student Volunteer Movement leaflets. 



Chapter XV 

Journal of the International Board Conferences, 1891-1905. 
The International Messenger, 1894-1902. 
The Bulletin, 1903-1906. 

Brief Handbook. The International Board, 1891. 
The Philosophy of W. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. 
A Message from the fourteenth Biennial Conference. 
Covenant between the International Board and Local Associa- 
tions. 
Statistical card. Convention programs, 
and other pamphlets. 



354s FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Papers read at Conferences. 

Exposition Travelers' Aid Committee circulars and reports. 

Travelers' Directory, 1898. 

State Board circulars and programs. 

Chapter XVI 

The Bulletin, 1905-1906. 

The Evangel, 1905-1906. 

The Association Monthly, February and March, 1915. 

Journal of International Board Conference, November, 1905. 

Report of Special Convention of The American Committee, 

January, 1906. 
Report of first Convention of the Y. W. C. A.'s of the U. S. of 

America. 
Report of Manhattan Conferences and circular letter from first 

committee. 
Circular letters from Miss Dodge. 
Joint Committee Leaflets, 1 to 8 with supplements. 
Joint Committee Exhibits. 

Agreement and Application Form for Charter Membership. 
Replies to questionnaires. 
Papers bearing upon terms of union. 
Material relating to Inter Church Conferences on Federation, 

definition of "Evangelical," etc. 

Chapters XVII to XXVIII Inclusive 

The Association Monthly, 1907-1915. 

The North American Student, 1913-1915. 

Reports, recommendations and year-books, 1908-1915. 

Eeports of National Conventions, 1906-1915. 

Reports of World's Conferences, 1898-1914. 

Joint Committee leaflets. 

OTHER SOURCES WILL BE CITED IN PLACE 

"As a corporate body," Association Monthly, Feb., 1907, p. 45. 

"As I look," Association Monthly, Feb., 1907, p. 42. 

"That the National Board shall concentrate," Final Report of 

the Joint Committee, Leaflet No. 8, p. 6. 
"The symmetrical development," Rep. and Rec. of the National 

Board to the second Biennial Convention, p. 52. 



SOURCES AND GLOSSARY 355 

"That the National Board shall adopt," First Convention Re- 
port, p. 15. 

Table of receipts. Annual treasurer's reports of The Ameri- 
can Committee. 

Convention subscriptions, Kansas and Penn. State convention 
reports. 

"The strongest are needed," Introduction to "The Claims and 
Opportunities of the Christian Ministry." Y. M. C. A. 
Press, N. Y. 1911. 

"Intensive as well as extensive," Mabel Cratty, Association 
Monthly, Jan., 1908, p. 568. 

"The ultimate purpose," Second Convention Report, p. 107. 

Evangelical Church basis. History of the North American 
Young Men's Christian Association, pp. 91, et seq., and 
Leaflet No. 4. 

Federal Council, Joint Committee Leaflet No. 5. 

"Der Reichsbote," May 23, 1910. 

"It may be an audience," page 43, Fourth World's Conference 
Report. 

"At least 5000," quoted in Association Monthly, June, 1911, 
p. 200. 

See article by Jessie Woodrow Wilson, "What Girls can do for 
Girls in Good Housekeeping," April, 1913. 

"Times of Retreat," from Manual of Prayers prepared for 
Mohonk Conference. 

See report of Mohonk Conference, Association Monthly, July, 
1913. 

See "Students and the World Wide Expansion." Report of 
Student Volunteer Convention of 1913. 

Garden City Report under title, "Social Needs and the Col- 
leges." 

See pamphlet given each guest at the "Harriet Judson." 

"Let us resolve," Mrs. Warren Buxton, Joint Committee, 
Exhibit XIV. 

"Not the cities alone," see Wage Earning Women. (The Mac- 
millan Company, 1910.) Report of Dr. Annie M. Mac- 
Lean, director of sociological investigation undertaken by 
the National Board in 1907. 

Woodford County, see minutes of sectional conference in Re- 
port of Secretaries Association to be had only of members 
of the Association. 



356 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Camp Fire Girls, Association Monthly, March, 1912, p. 43. 
"European and American," first World's Conference Report, 

p. 114. 
Mrs. Wishard, The Evangel, December, 1890, p. 7. 
The Evangel, January, 1891, p. 9, also January, 1893, p. 7. 
"We were in all," Evangel, September, 1891. 
"A Scotch mind," Ten Years Record, p. 16. 
Dr. Johnston Ross in The Universality of Jesus Christ. The 

Evangel, September, 1906, p. 25. 
J. H. Tarleton — George Williams, p. 133. 
Grace H. Dodge, article in The World To-day, October, 1910. 

Association Monthly and Supplement, January, 1915, 

March, 1915. 
Janet McCook Whitman — see Association Monthly, January, 

1910, p. 1. 
English Mottoes — Girls of Yesterday and To-day, pp. 70-73. 
Hon. E. Kinnaird. The Evangel, July, 1894, p. 13. 



I 



ASSOCIATIONS COMPRISING THE YOUNG 

WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS OF 

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 

JANUARY 1, 1916 

Stars indicate charter membership — December 5, 1906. 

* Previous afl&liation with The American Committee. 

**Previou8 affiliation with the International Board. 
(Charter Associations coming in between 1906 and 1909 not 

indicated. ) 



CITY ASSOCIATIONS 



Alabama 

Alabama City- 
Birmingham* ♦- 

Mobile* 

Montgomery* 
Arizona 

Bisbee 

Phoenix 
Arkansas 

Fort Smith 

Little Rock 
California 

Fresno* 

Long Beach* 

Los Angeles* 

Oakland** 

Pasadena 

Redlands 

Riverside* 

Sacramento* 

San Bernardino 

San Diego 

San Francisco** 

San Jos€ 



Colorado 

Colorado Springs** 

Denver** 

Denver, Rest and Recrea- 
tion Rooms 

Denver, Scandinavian 
Connecticut 

Bridgeport* 

Meriden 

New Britain 

New Haven** 

New London 
Delawabe 

Wilmington 
District of Columbia 

Washington, Colored 

Washington** (W. C. A.) 

Washington* 
Florida 

Jacksonville 

Tampa 

Georgia 
Athens* 



357 



358 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 



Atlanta* '■"■ 


Ottumwa* 


Augusta 


Sioux City* 


Savannah* 


Waterloo 


HAWAn 
Honolulu* 


Kansas 

Kansas City* ( 


■1 1 yf J-lV^-i- 4***1* 


Leavenworth 


Idaho 


Topeka* 


Boise 


Wichita* 


Illinois 


KjENTUCKX 


Aurora* 


Louisville 


Bloomington 


Louisiana 


Chicago* (Assn. House) 


New Orleans 


Danville 


Maine 


Decatur* 


Bangor 


East St. Louis 


Bar Harbor* 


Elgin* 


Lewiston** 


Peoria* 


Portland* 


Quincy* 


Maryland 


Rockford* 


Baltimore** 


Springfield 


Massachusetts 


Indiana 


Boston 


Elkhart 


Haverhill 


Evansville 


Holyoke* 


Fort Wayne* 


Lawrence* 


Indianapolis* 


Lowell* 


Marion 


New Bedford 


South Bend* 


Springfield** 


Terrs Haute* 


Worcester** 


Iowa 


Michigan 


Boone 


Ann Arbor* 


Burlington* 


Battle Creek* 


Cedar Rapids* 


Bay City* 


Clinton 


Detroit* 


Council Bluffs 


Flint 


Des Moines* 


Grand Rapids 


Dubuque* 


Jackson* 


Fort Dodge 


Kalamazoo* 


Keokuk* 


Lansing* 


Marshalltown 


Muskegon 


Mason City 


Owosso 


Muscatine* 


Saginaw* 



(Center) 



fi 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 



359 



St. Joseph 
Traverse City 

Minnesota 
Duluth* 
Minneapolis* 
St. Paul 
Winona 

Mississippi 
Laurel 

Missouri 

Joplin** 

Kansas City* 

St. Joseph* 

St. Louis** (W. C. A.) 

St. Louis 

Springfield 
Montana 

Billings 

Great Falls 

Missoula 
Nebraska 

Lincoln* 

Omaha* 
New Hampshire 

Nashua* 
New Jersey 

Camden 

Jersey City* 

Newark** 

Newton* 

Passaic* 

Paterson* 

Phillipsburg 

Plainfield 

The Oranges 

Trenton* 
New Mexico 

Albuquerque 
New York 

Albany 



Batavia 

Binghamton* 

Brooklyn** 

Buffalo* 

Cohoes* 

Elmira 

Gloversville* 

Jamestown* 

Loelcport 

Newburgh* 

New York City 
Central Branch** 
Harlem Branch* "- 
Bronx Branch 
Colored Women's Branch 
International Institute 
French Branch *^'' 
Recreation Center 
West Side Branch^* 

Poughkeepsie* 

Rochester* 

Schenectady* 

Syracuse** 

The Tonawandas 

Utiea** 

Yonkers* 
North Carolina 

Asheville 

Charlotte* ^ 

Greensboro* 

Wilmington 

Winston-Salem 
North Dakota 

Fargo 

Grand Forks* 
Ohio 

Akron* 

Canton 

Cincinnati** 

Cleveland** 

Columbus** 



360 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 



Dayton** 

East Liverpool 

Elyria 

Hamilton** 

Lancaster 

Newark 

Portsmouth 

Springfield** 

Steubenville 

Toledo* 

Youngstown* 
Oexahoma 

Oklahoma City 

Tulsa 
Obeqon 

Portland* 

Salem 
Pennsylvania 

AUentown** 

Altoona* 

Chester 

Coatesville 

Easton 

Erie** 

Germantown 

Harrisburg* 

Hazleton 

Hershey 

Johnstown 

Lancaster* 

McKeesport 

Meadville 

New Castle 

Norristown 

Philadelphia** 

Pittsburg* 

Pittsburg, East Liberty** 

Pottsto\ATi 

Reading* 

Scran ton* 

Sunbury 



Warren 

Washington 

Wilkes-Barre* 

Williamsport* 

Wilmerding 

York* 
Rhode Island 

Pawtucket & Central Falls 

Providence** 
South Caeolina 

Charleston* 
Tennessee 

Chattanooga* 

Knoxville** 

Nashville* 
Texas 

Austin 

Beaumont 

Dallas 

El Paso 

Fort Worth 

Galveston 

Houston 

San Antonio 
Utah 

Salt Lake City 
Virginia 

Lynchburg 

Norfolk** 

Richmond** 

Roanoke 
Washington 

Bellingham 

Everett 

North Yakima 

Seattle* 

Spokane* 

Tacoma* 
West Vieginia 

Charleston 

Wheeling* 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 



361 



Wisconsin 
La Crosse* 
Madison 



Milwaukee* 
Racine* 



COUNTY ASSOCIATIONS AND HEADQUARTERS 



Illinois 

Lake County- 
Highland Park 

Lake Forest 
Woodford County 

Minonk 
Iowa 

Cherokee County 

Cherokee 
Page County 

Clarinda 

Shenandoah 
Kansas 

Montgomery County 

Independence 
Minnesota 

Goodhue County 

Red Wing 
Mower County 

Austin 



Nebraska 
Hall County 
Grand Island 
New Jersey 

Lakewood and Ocean Coimty 
Lakewood 
New Yoek 
Chautauqua Coimty 

Fredonia 
Greene County 
Tannersville 
Ohio 

Greene County 
Xenia 
Texas 

Coryell County 
Gatesville 
Wisconsin 
Dodge County 
Beaver Dam 



STUDENT ASSOCIATIONS 
Alabama 

Agricultural and Mechanical College Normal 

Alabama Central Female College Tuscaloosa 

Alabama Girls' Technical Institute Montevallo* 

Alabama Normal College for Girls Livingston* 

Alabama Synodical College for Women Talladega 

Athena College Athens* 

Downing Industrial School Brewton 

Eighth District Agricultural School Athens 

First District Agricultural College Jackson* 

Judson College Marion 

Lomax-Hannon High and Industrial School . . .Greenville 
Loulie Compton Seminary Birmingham* 



362 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Marion Seminary Marion* 

Miles Memorial College Birmingham 

Ninth District Agricultural School Blountsville 

Seventh District Agricultural School Albertville 

State Normal School Florence 

State Normal School Jacksonville* 

State Normal School Montgomery 

State Normal College Troy 

Talladega College Talladega 

Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Inst Tuskegee 

University of Alabama Tuscaloosa* 

Women's College of Alabama Montgomery 

Arkansas 

Arkansas Baptist College Little Rock 

Arkansas Conference College Siloam Springs 

Central College Conway 

Crescent College and Conservatory for Women 

Eureka Springs 

Galloway College Searcy 

Henderson Brown College Arkadelphia* 

Philander Smith College Little Rock 

Second District Agricultural School Russellville 

State Agricultural College Monticello 

State Normal School Conway 

University of Arkansas Fayetteville* 

California 

College of Pacific San Jos§ 

College of Physicians and Surgeons Los Angeles 

Leland Stanford Jr. University .... Stanford University* 

Mills College Mills College* 

Occidental College Eagle Kock* 

Pomona College Claremont 

Sherman Institute Riverside 

State Normal School Chico* 

State Normal School Los Angeles* 

State Normal School San Diego 

State Normal School San Jose 

University of California Berkeley* 

University of Redlands Redlands 

University of So. Cal Los Angeles* 

Whittier College Whittier* 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 363 

Colorado 

Boulder Preparatory School Boulder 

Colorado College Colorado Springs* 

Colorado Woman's College Montclair 

State Agricultural College Fort Collins* 

State Teachers' College Greeley* 

State High School Greeley 

University of Colorado Boulder' 

University of Denver University Park* 

Delaware 

Woman's College Newark 

District of Columbia 

Gallaudet College Washington 

Howard University Washington 

Florida 

Baptist Academy Jacksonville 

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College . . Tallahassee 

Florida State College for Women Tallahassee* 

John B. Stetson University Deland* 

Rollins College Winter Park* 

Georgia 

Agnes Scott College ^ Decatur* 

Andrew College Cuthbert* 

Atlanta University Atlanta 

Brenau College Gainesville* 

Cox College College Park* 

Georgia Normal and Industrial College .... Milledgeville* 

Haines Institute Augusta 

La Grange College La Grange* 

Lucy Cobb Institute Athens* 

Martha Berry School Mt. Berry 

Paine College Augusta 

Piedmont College Demorest 

Second District Agricultural School Tif ton 

Shorter College Rome* 

South Georgia College McRae 

South Georgia State Normal Valdosta 

Spelman Seminary Atlanta 

State Normal School Athens* 

Vashti Industrial School Thomasville 

Wesleyan College Macon* 



364 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Idaho 

Academy of Idaho Pocatello 

College of Idaho Caldwell 

Idaho Industrial Institute Weiser 

State Normal School Albion 

University of Idaho Moscow* 

Ilunois 

Bradley Polytechnic Institute Peoi^a* 

Carthage College Carthage* 

Eastern Illinois State Normal School Charleston 

Eureka College Eureka* 

Ferry Hall Lake Forest* 

Frances Shimer School for Girls Mt. Carroll 

Geneseo Collegiate Institute Geneseo 

Grand Prairie Seminary Onarga* 

Hedding College Abingdon* 

Illinois College Jacksonville* 

Illinois Women's College Jacksonville* 

Illinois Wesleyan University Bloomington* 

James Milliken University Decatur* 

Jennings Seminary Aurora* 

Kjiox College Galesburg* 

Lake Forest College Lake Forest* 

Lincoln College Lincoln* 

McKendree College Lebanon* 

Medical Women Students' Christian League Chicago 

Monmouth College Monmouth* 

Northwestern College Naperville* 

Northwestern University Evanston* 

Shurtleff College Upper Alton* 

Southern Collegiate Institute Albion* 

Southern Illinois State Normal University . . Carbondale* 

State Normal School De Kalb 

State Normal University Normal* 

University of Chicago Chicago* 

School for Nurses of the Presbyterian Hospital . . Chicago 

University of Illinois Champaign* 

Western Illinois State Normal School Macomb* 

Wheaton College Wheaton* 

William and Vashti College Aledo 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 365 

Women Students' Christian League of the Physical Cul- 
ture School and College of Physcultopathy . . Chicago 

Indiana 

Butler College Irvington* 

Central Normal College Danville* 

De Pauw University Greencastle* 

Earlham College Richmond* 

Franklin College Franklin* 

Hanover College Hanover* 

Indiana Central University Indianapolis 

Indiana University Bloomington* 

Moores Hill College Moores Hill* 

Oakland College Oakland City* 

Purdue University West Lafayette 

Spiceland Academy Spiceland 

State Normal School ; . . Terre Haute* 

Teachers' College Indianapolis 

Union Christian College Merom* 

Valparaiso University Valparaiso* 

Winona College Winona Lake 

Iowa 

Amity High School College Springs* 

Buena Vista College Storm Lake* 

Central College Pella* 

Coe College Cedar Rapids* 

Cornell College Mt. Vernon* 

Des Moines College Des Moines* 

Drake University Des Moines* 

Ellsworth College Iowa Falls* 

Epworth Seminary Epworth* 

Grinnell College Grinnell* 

High School Grinnell 

High School Indianola* 

High School Iowa City 

High School Knoxville 

High School Nevada 

High School Toledo* 

Highland Park College Des Moines 

Iowa State College Ames* 

Iowa State Teachers' College Cedar Falls* 



366 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Iowa Wesleyan University Mt. Pleasant* 

Leander Clark College Toledo* 

Lenox College Hopkinton* 

Morningside College Sioux City* 

Parsons College Fairfield* 

Penn College » Oskaloosa* 

Simpson College Indianola* 

State University of Iowa Iowa City* 

Tabor College Tabor* 

Upper Iowa University Fayette* 

Western Union College Le Mara* 

Kansas 

Atchison County High School Efl&ngham 

Baker University Baldwin* 

Bethany College Lindsborg* 

Chase County High School Cottonwood Falls 

Cherokee County High School Columbus* 

Clay County High School Clay Centre* 

College of Emporia Emporia* 

Cooper College Sterling* 

Decatur County High School Oberlin 

Dickinson County High School Chapman* 

Enterprise Normal Academy Enterprise 

Fairmount College Wichita* 

Friends University Wichita* 

Haskell Institute Lawrence* 

High School Arkansas City 

High School Atchison 

High School Cheney 

High School El Dorado 

High School Lawrence 

High School Lyons 

High School Minneapolis 

High School Newton 

High School Salina 

High School Stafford 

Highland University Highland* 

Kansas City University Kansas City* 

Kansas State Agricultural College Manhattan* 

Kansas State University Lawrence* 

Kansas Wesleyan University Salina* 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS S67 

Kingman County High School Kingman 

La Bette Coimty High School Altamont* 

McPhcrson College McPherson* 

Montgomery County High School Independence* 

Norton County High School Norton* 

Ottawa University Ottawa* 

Pratt County High School Pratt 

Reno County High School Nickerson* 

Southwestern College Winfield* 

State Manual Training Normal School Pittsburg 

State Normal School Emporia^' 

Sunmer County High School Wellington* 

Topeka Educational and Industrial Institute Topeka 

Washburn Academy Topeka 

Washburn College Topeka* 

Western University Kansas City 

Kentucky 

Berea College Berea* 

Georgetown College Georgetown 

Hamilton College Lexington 

Kentucky College for Women Danville* 

Kentucky Female Orphan School Midway* 

Kentucky State University Lexington* 

Lincoln Institute Simpsonville 

Logan College Russellville 

Millersburg Female College Millersburg 

Science Hill School Shelbyville 

State Normal School Richmond 

State University ■. Louisville 

Sue Bennett Memorial School London* 

Transylvania University Lexington* 

Louisiana 

H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College New Orleans* 

Louisiana Industrial Institute Ruston 

Louisiana State University Baton Rouge 

Mansfield Female College Mansfield 

Silliman Institute Clinton 

State Normal School Natchitoches 

Maine 

Bates College LeA^iston* 

Coburn Classical Institute Waterville* 



368 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Colby College Waterville* 

East Maine Conference Seminary Bueksport 

Eastern State Normal School Castine 

Gould's Academy Bethel 

Hebron Academy Hebron* 

Higgins Classical Institute Charleston 

Maine Central Institute Pittsfield 

Maine Wesleyan Seminary Kent's Hill* 

Oak Grove Seminary Vassalboro 

Parsonfield Seminary Kezar Falls 

Ricker Classical Institute Houlton* 

University of Maine Orono 

Mabyland 

Girls' Latin School Baltimore* 

Maryland College Lutherville* 

Goucher College Baltimore* 

Hood College Frederick* 

National Park Seminary Forest Glen 

Western Maryland College Westminster* 

Massachusetts 

Boston University, College of Liberal Arts Boston* 

Gushing Academy Ashburnham* 

Emerson College of Oratory Boston* 

Mt. Holyoke College South Hadley* 

Mount Ida School for Girls Newton 

Newton Hospital Training School . . . Newton Lower Falls 

Northfield Seminary East Northfield* 

Simmons College Boston 

Wellesley College Wellesley 

Weston School for Girls Weston 

Michigan 

Adrian College Adrian* 

Albion College Albion* 

Alma College Alma* 

Central State Normal School Mt. Pleasant 

Ferris Institute Big Rapids 

High School = Ypsilanti 

Hillsdale College Hillsdale* 

Hope College Holland* 

Kalamazoo College Kalamazoo* 

Michigan Agricultural College East Lansing* 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS S69 

Olivet College Olivet* 

State Normal College Ypsilanti* 

University of Michigan Ann Arbor* 

Western State Normal School Kalamazoo 

JMlNNESOTA 

Albert Lea College Albert Lea* 

Carleton College Northfield* 

College of Agriculture St. Paul 

Hamline University St. Paul* 

Macalester College St. Paul* 

Northwest School of Agriculture Crookston 

Pillsbury Academy Owatonna* 

St. Paul's College St. Paul Park* 

School of Agriculture St. Paul* 

State Normal School Mankato* 

State Normal School Moorhead 

State Normal School Winona 

University of Minnesota Minneapolis* 

West Central School of Agriculture Morris 

Windom Institute Montevideo* 

Mississippi 

Agricultural and Mechanical College Alcorn 

Agricultural High School Oakland 

Belhaven Collegiate Industrial Institute Jackson 

Grenada College Grenada 

Industrial Institute and College Columbus* 

Jackson College Jackson 

Mississippi Normal College Hattiesburg 

Mississippi Synodical College Holly Springs* 

Pearl River County Agricultural High School . . Poplarville 

Rust College Holly Springs 

Southern Christian Institute Edwards 

Tougaloo University Tougaloo 

University of Mississippi University* 

Utica Institute Utica 

Whitworth College Brookhaven* 

Woman's College Meridian 

MlSSOUEI 

American School of Osteopathy Kirksville* 

Carleton College Farmington 

Central College Fayette 



370 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Central College Lexington* 

Central Wesleyan College Warrenton* 

Christian College , Columbia 

Cottey College Nevada* 

Drury College Springfield* 

Forest Park University St, Louis 

George R. Smith College Sedalia 

Hardin College Mexico* 

High School Kirksville* 

Howard Payne College Fayette* 

Iberia Academy Iberia* 

Kidder Institute Kidder* 

Lexington College Lexington* 

Lincoln Institute Jefferson City 

Lindenwood College St. Charles* 

Missouri Valley College Marshall* 

Missouri Wesleyan College Cameron* 

Northwest State Normal School Maryville* 

Park College Parkville* 

Scarritt Morrisville College Morrisville 

South West Baptist College Bolivar 

Southeastern State Normal School Cape Girardeau* 

State Normal School Kirksville* 

State Normal School Springfield* 

State Normal School Warrensburg* 

Stephens College Columbia* 

Synodical College Fulton* 

Tarkio College Tarkio* 

University of Missouri Columbia* 

Washington UniV'ersity St. Louis 

William Woods College Fulton* 

Montana 

Montana Wesleyan University Helena* 

State Agricultural College Bozeman* 

State Normal School Dillon 

University of Montana Missoula* 

Nebraska 

Bellevue College Bellevue* 

Cotner University Lincoln* 

Doane College Crete* 

Franklin Academy Franklin* 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 371 

Fremont Normal School Fremont* 

Grand Island College Grand Island* 

Hastings College Hastings* 

High School Franklin 

High School Seward 

Nebraska Central College Central City* 

Nebraska Wesleyan University University Place* 

Santee Normal Training School Santee 

School of Agriculture Lincoln 

State Normal School Chadron 

State Normal School Kearney* 

State Normal School Peru* 

State Normal School Wayne 

Teachers' College High School Lincoln 

University of Nebraska Lincoln* 

University of Omaha Omaha 

York College York* 

Nevada 

Carson Indian School Stewart 

State University Reno* 

New Hampshire 

Colby Academy New London 

New Hampshire College Durham 

Sanborn Seminary Kingston* 

State Normal School Plymouth 

Tilton Seminary Tilton* 

New Jersey 

Centenary Collegiate Institute Hackettstown* 

State Normal School Trenton* 

New Mexico 

College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arta . . State College 

Indian School Albuquerque 

University of New Mexico Albuquerque 

New York 

Adelphi Academy Brooklyn* 

Alfred University Alfred* 

Barnard College New York City* 

The Castle, Miss Mason's School Tarrytown 

Cazenovia Seminary Cazenovia* 

Cornell University Ithaca* 

Elmira College Elmira* 



372 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Genesee Wesleyan Seminary Lima* 

Horace Mann School New York City 

Hunter College New York City 

Keuka College and Institute Keuka 

Mechanics Institute Rochester 

Central Club for Nurses New York City 

Studio Club New York City 

St. Lawrence University Canton 

State College for Teachers Albany* 

State Normal School Fredonia* 

State Normal School New Paltz* 

State School of Agriculture Alfred 

Syracuse University Syracuse* 

Teachers* College, Columbia University . . . New York City 
University of Rochester Rochester* 

NOBTH CaBOLINA 

Bennett College Greensboro 

Brevard Institute Brevard* 

Carolina College Maxton 

Davenport College Lenoir* 

East Carolina Teachers' Training School .....Greenville 

Elizabeth College Charlotte* 

Elon College Elon* 

Greensboro College for Women Greensboro* 

Guilford College Guilford* 

Joseph K. Bricks School Bricks 

Lincoln Academy King's Mountain 

Linwood College Gastonia* 

Littleton College Littleton 

Louisburg College for Women Louisburg* 

Meredith College Raleigh* 

Morrison Industrial School Franklin 

National Religious Training School Durham 

Normal and Collegiate Institute Asheville* 

Normal and Collegiate Institute Albemarle 

Oxford College Oxford* 

Peace Institute Raleigh* 

Queens College Charlotte* 

Salem College Winston-Salem 

Shaw University Raleigh 

Southern Presbyterian College Red Springs* 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 373 

State Normal College Greensboro* 

State School for the Blind Ealeigh* 

Statesville Female College Statesville 

North Dakota 

Fargo College Fargo* 

Jamestown College Jamestown 

New Kockford Collegiate Institute ....... .New Rockford 

State Agricultural College Fargo* 

State Normal Industrial School Ellendale* 

State Normal School Mayville* 

State Normal School Minot 

State Normal School Valley City* 

University of North Dakota University* 

Ohio 

Ashland College Ashland* 

Baldwin- Wallace College Berea 

Bluffton College Bluffton 

Bonebrake Theological Seminary Dayton 

Cedarville College Cedarville 

Cincinnati Conservatory of Music Cincinnati 

College of Wooster Wooster* 

Defiance College Defiance* 

Denison University Granville* 

Findlay College Findlay* 

Franklin College New Athens* 

Glendale College Glendale* 

Heidelberg University Tiffin* 

Hiram College Hiram* 

Lake Erie College Painesville* 

Lebanon University Lebanon* 

Marietta College Marietta* 

Miami University Oxford* 

Mount Union Scio College Alliance* 

Municipal University of Akron . . . .* Akron 

Muskingum College New Concord* 

Oberlin College Oberlin* 

Ohio Northern University Ada* 

Ohio Soldiers and Sailors' Orphans' Home Xenia 

Ohio State University Columbus* 

Ohio University Athens* 

Ohio Wesleyan University Delaware* 



374 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Otterbein University Westerville* 

Oxford College Oxford* 

Savannah Academy Savannah* 

State Normal School Kent 

University of Cincinnati Cincinnati* 

Western College Oxford* 

Western Reserve University Cleveland* 

Wilberforce University Wilberforce* 

Wilmington College Wilmington* 

Wittenberg College Springfield* 

Oklahoma 

Agricultural and Mechanical College Stillwater* 

Agricultural and Normal University Langston 

Bacone College Bacone* 

Central State Normal College Edmond* 

East Central State Normal School Ada 

Eufaula Boarding School Euf aula 

Henry Kendall College Tulsa 

High School Tulsa 

Indian School Chilocco 

Kingfisher College Kingfisher 

Methodist University of Oklahoma Guthrie* 

Northwestern Normal School Alva* 

Oklahoma College for Women Chickasha 

Oklahoma Institute of Technology Tonka wa'' 

Oklahoma Presbyterian College Durant 

Phillips University Enid 

Southwestern Normal School Weatherf ord* 

Tuskahoma Female Seminary Tuskahoma 

University of Oklahoma Norman* 

Wheelock Academy Millerton 

Oregon 

Albany College Albany* 

High School Dallas 

High School Eugene 

McMinnville College McMinnville 

Oregon Agricultural College Corvallis* 

Pacific College Newberg* 

Pacific University Forest Grove* 

Philomath College Philomath* 

Salem Indian Training School Chemawa 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 375 

State Normal School Monmouth 

University of Oregon Eugene* 

Willamette University Salem* 

Pennsylvania 

Albright College Myerstown* 

Allegheny College Meadville* 

Beaver College Beaver* 

Beeehwood College Jenkintown 

Birmingham School for Girls Birmingham* 

Bucknell University Lewisburg* 

Central State Normal School Lock Haven* 

Cumberland Valley State Normal Shippensburg* 

Darlington Seminary West Chester* 

Dickinson College Carlisle* 

Dilworth Hall Pittsburg 

Friends' School German town 

Geneva College Beaver Falls 

Grove City College Grove City* 

Indian School Carlisle 

Irving College Mechanicsburg* 

Juniata College Huntingdon 

Keystone State Normal School Kutztown* 

Lebanon Valley College Annville* 

Moravian Seminary and College for Women — .Bethlehem 

Penn Hall Chambersburg 

Pennsylvania College for Women Pittsburgh* 

Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art 

Philadelphia 

Perkioraen Seminary Pennsberg* 

Philadelphia College of Osteopathy Philadelphia 

Shippen School Lancaster 

Southwestern State Normal School California* 

State College State College 

State Normal SnJiool Bloomsburg* 

State Normal School Clarion* 

State Normal School East Stroudsburg 

State Normal School Edinboro"* 

State Normal School Indiana* 

State Normal School Mansfield* 

State Normal School Millersville* 

State Normal School West Chester* 



376 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Stevens School Germantown 

Susquehanna University Selins Grove 

Swarthmore College Swarthmore 

University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh 

Ursinus College Collegeville 

Walnut Lane School Germantown 

Washington Seminary Washington 

' Waynesburg College Waynesburg* 

Westminster College New Wilmington* 

Williamsport Dickinson Seminary Williamsport* 

Wilson College Chambersburg* 

Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania . . Philadelphia* 
Wyoming Seminary Kingston* 

Rhode Island 

East Greenwich Academy East Greenwich 

South Cakolina 

Allen University Columbia 

Anderson College Anderson 

Benedict College Columbia 

Chicora College Greenville 

Claflin University Orangeburg 

Clifford Seminary Union 

Coker College for Women Hartsville 

College for Women Columbia 

Columbia College Columbia " 

Confederate Home College Charleston* 

Converse College Spartanburg* 

Erskine College Due West* 

Greenville Female College Greenville* 

Lander College Greenwood* 

Limestone College Gaffney* 

Penn. Normal and Agricultural School . . St. Helena Island 

Sterling Industrial College Greenville 

Winthrop Normal and Industrial College Rock Hill* 

Woman's College Due West* 

South Dakota 

Dakota Wesleyan University Mitchell* 

High School Mitchell* 

Hope School Springfield 

Huron College Huron* 

Indian School Rapid City 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 377 

Northern Normal and Industrial School Aberdeen* 

Redfield College Redfield 

Riggs Institute Flandreau 

Sioux Falls College Sioux Falls 

State Agricultural College Brookings* 

State Normal School Spearfish 

State Normal School Springfield* 

University of South Dakota Vermillion* 

Yankton College Yankton* 

Tennessee 

Agricultural and Industrial State Normal School. . . 

Nashville 

Buford College Nashville 

Carson and Newman College Jefferson City* 

Centenary College Cleveland 

Cumberland University Lebanon* 

East Tennessee Normal School Johnson City 

Fisk University Nashville 

Grandview Normal Institute Grandview 

Knoxville College Knoxville 

Lane College Jackson 

Lincoln County High School Fayetteville 

Lincoln Memorial University Hurrogate 

McFerrin School Martin 

Martin College Pulaski 

Maryville College Maryville* 

Middle Tennessee Normal Murfreesboro 

Morristown Normal College Morristown 

Radnor College Nashville 

Roger Williams University Nashville 

Tuseulum College Tusculum* 

University of Chattanooga Chattanooga* 

University of Tennessee Knoxville* 

Ward-Belmont College Nashville* 

West Tennessee State Normal School Memphis 

Texas 

Baylor University Waco 

Bishop College Marshall 

Clarendon College Clarendon 

College of Industrial Arts Denton* 

Coronal Institute San Marcos* 



378 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Daniel Baker College Brown wood* 

Houston College Houston 

Howard Payne College Brownwood* 

North Texas College Sherman 

North Texas State Normal School Denton 

Phillips University Tyler 

Prairie View Normal and Industrial College . . Prairie View 

Rice Institute Houston 

Sam Houston Normal Institute Huntsville* 

Simmons College Abilene 

Southwest Texas State Normal School San Marcos* 

Southwestern University Georgetown 

State School for the Blind Austin* 

Texas Christian University Fort Worth* 

Texas Fairmont Seminary Weatherf ord 

Texas Presbyterian College Milford 

Texas Woman's College Fort Worth 

Tillotson College .Austin 

Trinity University Waxahachie* 

University of Texas Austin* 

West Texas State Normal School Canyon 

Vermont 

Burr and Burton Seminary Manchester 

Middlebury College Middlebury* 

Montpelier Seminary Montpelier 

Troy Conference Academy Poultney* 

University of Vermont Burlington* 

Virginia 

Blackstone Female Institute Blackstone* 

Eastern College Manassas* 

Hollins College Hollins* 

Martha Washington College Abingdon 

Mary Baldwin Seminary Staunton* 

Miller Manual Labor School Miller School* 

Normal and Industrial Institute Ettricks 

Oak Park Institute Oak Park 

Randolph-Macon Institute Danville 

Randolph-Macon Woman's College Lynchburg* 

Roanoke Institute Danville 

Shenandoah Collegiate Institute Dayton 

Southern Seminary Buena Vista* 



LIST OF ASSOCIATIONS 379 

State Normal School East Radford 

State Normal School Farmville* 

State Normal School Fredericksburg 

State Normal and Industrial School Harrisonburg 

Stonewall Jackson Institute Abingdon^ 

SuUins College Bristol* 

Sweet Briar College Sweet Briar 

Virginia College Roanoke* 

Virginia Intermont College Bristol* 

Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind Staunton 

Westhampton College Richmond 

Williamsburg Institute Williamsburg 

Woman's College Richmond* 

Washington 

Cushman Indian School Tacoma 

State Normal School Bellingham* 

State Normal School Cheney* 

State Normal School Ellensburg 

University of Puget Sound Tacoma* 

University of Washington Seattle* 

Washington State College , Pullman* 

Whitman College Walla Walla* 

Whitworth College Spokane* 

West Vieginia 

Bethany College Bethany* 

Broaddus Institute Philippi 

Concord State Normal School Athena* 

High School Fairmont 

Keyser Preparatory School Keyser* 

Lewisburg Seminary Lewisburg* 

Marshall College Huntington* 

Morris Harvey College Barboursville 

Salem College Salem 

Shepherd College Shepherdstown* 

State Normal School Fairmont 

State Normal School Glenville 

State Normal School West Liberty 

West Virginia Collegiate Institute Institute 

West Virginia University Morgantown* 

West Virginia Wesleyan College Buckhannon* 



380 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Wisconsin 

Beloit College Beloit* 

Carroll College Waukesha* 

Indian School Tomah 

Indian School Wittenberg 

Lawrence College Appleton* 

Milton College Milton 

Milwaukee-Downer College Milwaukee* 

Northland College Ashland 

Ripon College Ripon* 

State Normal School La Crosse 

State Normal School Milwaukee 

State Normal School Oshkosh 

State Normal School Platteville* 

State Normal School River Falls* 

State Normal School Stevens Point* 

State Normal School Superior 

State Normal School Whitewater* 

Stout Institute Menomonie 

University of Wisconsin Madison* 

Wayland Academy Beaver Dam* 

Wyoming 

University of Wyoming Laramie* 

PoBTo Rico 

Presbyterian Hospital San Juan 

NATIONAL BOARD 

Of the Young Women's Christian Associations of the 

United States of America 

600 Lexington Avenue 

New York City 

Telephone, 6000 Plaza Cable Address, Outpost, New York 

OFFICERS 
Mrs, Robert E. Speer, President 

Mrs. John French, Chairman Executive Committee 
Mrs. James S. Cushman, First Vice-President 

Mrs. William W. Rossiter, Second Vice-President 
Mrs. Thomas S. Gladding, Secretary 

Mrs. Samuel J. Broadwell, Treasurer 



NATIONAL BOARD AND STAFF 



381 



Miss Annie M. Reynolds, Chairman Department of Field Work 
*Miss Elizabeth W. Dodge, Chairman Department Conventions 

and Conferences 
Miss Annie M. Reynolds, Chairman Secretarial Department 
Mrs. W. W. Rockwell, Chairman Publication Department 
Mrs. Dave Hennen Morris, Chairman Finance Department 
Mrs. G. K. Swinburne, Chairman Office Department 
Mrs. Charlton Wallace, Chairman Department of Method 
Mrs. James M. Speers, Chairman Town and Country 

Committee 
Mrs. Charles N. Judson, Chairman City Com/mittee 
Miss Gertrude E. MacArthur, Vice-Chairman City 

Committee 
Miss Clara Stillman Reed, Chairman Student Com- 
mittee 
Mrs. Augustus B. Wadsworth, Chairman Foreign Department 
Mrs. Samuel Murtland, Chairman Buildings Com/mittee 



*Mrs. 
*Mra. 

Mrs. 

Miss 

Mrs. 

Mrs. 

Miss 
*Mrs. 
*Mrs. 

Mrs. 

Mrs. 



Elizabeth P. Allan 


Mrs. 


E. B. Burwell 


Mrs. 


Edward S. Campbell 


Mrs. 


Maude Daeniker 


Mrs. 


Henry P. Davison 


*Mr8. 


R. A. Dorman 


*Mrs. 


Leila S. Frissell 


Mrs. 


John M. Hanna 


Mrs. 


J. H. Hoskina 


*Miss 


Clarence M. Hyde 


*Mrs. 


Francis de Lacy Hyde 


*Mrs. 



R, C. Jenkinaon 
Seabury Cone Mastick 
Frederick Mead 
John R. Mott 
Warren Olney, Jr. 
R. H. Passmore 
Francis B. Sayre 
Finley J. Shepard 
Helen M. A. Taylor 
George Vaux, Jr. 
William Shaw Ward 



AUXILIARY MEMBERS 



Mrs. Lemuel Bolton Bangs 
Mrs. F. S. Bennett 
Mrs. Robert L. Dickinson 
Mrs. William Francis Domi- 

nick 
Mrs. Charles H. Ferry 



Miss Anna C. MeClintock 
Miss Florence M. Marshall 
Miss Margaret Mead 
Mrs. James Pedersen 
Mrs. Arthur G. Stone 
Mrs. Warren H. Wilson 



Field representatives. 



382 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

BOARD OF TRUSTEES 

Mr. Alfred E. Marling, Mrs. Dave Hennen Morris 

Chairman Mr. Stephen Baker 

Mr. Wm. D. Murray, Mrs. Finley J. Shepard 

Secretary Mrs. Clarence M. Hyde 

Mr. Wm. M. Kingsley, Mr. Samuel Sloan, Jr. 
Treasurer 



FIELD COMMITTEES 

Mrs. C. C. Bullock, Chairman; Mrs. Irwin Rew, Treasurer y 
Central 

Mrs. George Vaux, Jr., Chairman; Mrs. Wm. L. McLean, 
Treasurer, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania 

Mrs. Charles P. Noyes, Chairman; Mrs. W. O. Winston, 
Treasurer, North Central 

Miss Elizabeth Dodge, Chairman; Mrs. Stanley Rumbough, 
Treasurer, Northeastern 

Mrs. E. B. Burwell, Chairman; Mrs. Charles Denny, Treas- 
urer, Northwestern 

Miss Helen M. A. Taylor, Chairman; Mrs. F. D. Phinney, 
Treasurer, Ohio and West Virginia 

Mrs. Warren Olney, Jr., Chairman; Mrs. A. Crawford Greene, 
Treasurer, Pacific Coast 

Mrs. Elizabeth Preston Allan, Chairman; Mrs. Joseph C. 
Patton, Treasurer, South Atlantic 

Mrs. D. S. Brown, Chairman; Mrs, C. C. Rainwater, Treas- 
urer, South Central 

Mrs. John M. Hanna, Chairman; Mrs. W. D. Felder, Treas- 
urer, Southwestern 

Mrs. William Shaw Ward, Chairman; Mrs. C. A. Graham, 
Treasurer, West Central 

SECRETARIAL STAFF 

NATIONAL BOARD OF THE YOUNG WOMEN'S 

CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATIONS 

Headquarters Secretaries 

Mabel Cratty, General Secretary 

Isabel Norton, Secretary to the General Secretary 

Rebecca F. McKiUip, Social Secretary 



NATIONAL BOARD AND STAFF 383 

Henrietta Roelofs, Special Worker 
Helen A. Ballard, Publicity Secretary 
Mrs. Isabella H. Santee, Buildings Manager 

SECRETAEIAIi DEPARTMENT OFFICE DEPARTMENT 

Elizabeth Wilson, Executive Margaret F. MacKinlay, Ex- 
Edith. N. Stanton, Director ecutive 

Bureau of Reference (Office Secretaries listed 

Nellie Starr Stevens, Opce under departments) 

Caroline B. Dow, Dean of 

Training System ^^REIGN department 

Elizabeth L. Dean, Assistant Clarissa H. Spencer, Acting 

to the Dean Executive 

Mary Scott, Registrar Susan M. Clute, Oifice Execu- 

Grace Quackenbush, Bursar tive 



FINANCE DEPARTMENT 

Harriet Taylor, Acting Execu- 
tive 



DEPARTMENT OF FIELD WORK 

Helen A. Davis, Executive 
Ell7 Schooley, Finance Secre- Catharine Scott, Office Exeou- 

tary *^^^ 

Helen Sanger, Office Executive DEPARTMENT of METHOD 
Jessie MacKinlay, Cashier _._._, . , ^ 

and Bursar ^?^^^^ Holmquist, Executive 

Elizabeth Boies, Office Execu- 

DEPARTMENT OF CONVENTIONS tive 

AND CONFERENCES Bertha Cond6, Senior Student 

Mabel Cratty, Acting Execu- Secretary 

fl^g Mabel T. Everett, Student 

Louise W. Brooks, Student ^^^^ Executive 

Bertha W. Seely, Office ^^^^^ S. Sims, City Office Ex- 

PUBLICATION DEPARTMENT L^gii^ Blanchard, state Uni- 

Mary Louise Allen, Executive versities 

Helen Thoburn, Editorial Sec- Eva D. Bowles, Colored Work, 

retary Cities 

Rhoda E. McCulloch, Edi- Mrs. Harry M. Bremer, Immi- 

torial Secretary gration Work 

A. Estella Paddock, Editorial Anna L. Brown, Physical 

Secretary Education and Hygiene 

Margaret Cook, Business Oolooah Burner, Church 

Manager Schools 



3S4> FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 

Margaret Burton, Missionary Gertrude E. Griffith, Girls' 

Interests Work 

Eliza R. Butler, Secondary Josephine V. Piny on, Colored 

Schools Schools 

Ethel Cutler, Religious Work, Anna V. Rice, Religious 

Student and Country Work, City 

Edith M. Dabb, Indian Anna Seaburg, Large Towns 

Schools Florence Simms, Industrial 

Jessie Field, Town and Coun- Work 

try Helen L. Thomas, Education 
Blanche Geaiy, Economic 

Work 

Field Secretabies 

PACIFIC COAST Caroline Foresman, County 

, . . ^ ,.r . ^T Marjorie M. Persons, Office 
(Arizona, California, Ne- 
vada.) NORTH CENTRAL 

319 Russ Building, (lox^a, Minnesota, Nebraska, 

San Francisco, Cal. North and South Dakota,) 

Lillian E. Janes, Executive 412 Flour Exchange, 

Alice Moore, Girls' Work Minneapolis, Minn. 

Sarah Oddie, County Mrs. Emma F. Bjers, Execu- 

Mary I. Bentley, Student tive 

Helen Topping, Special , City 

Worker Clara I. Taylor, Industrial — 

Kathleen I. Bartholomew, Extension 

Office Margaret O'Connell, County 

Adelia Dodge, Student 
Josephine Lynch, Student 
Edith Helmer, Student 

630 Witherspoon Building, Harriet A. Cunningham, Office 
Philadelphia, Pa. 

Mary Johns Hopper, Execu- southwestern 

tive (New Mexico, Oklahoma, 

Lucy P. Garner, Assistant Texas.) 

Executive 512 Sumpter Bldg., 

Caroline Jones, Special Dallas, Tex. 

Worker Mabel K. Stafford, Executive 

Anna Owers, Industrial — Ex- Mildred Corbett, City 

tension Marguerite Stuart, Student 

Anna G. Seesholtz, Student Helen S. Whiting, Office 



DELAWARE, MARYLAND AND 
PENNSYLVANIA 



NATIONAL BOARD AND STAFF 



385 



NOBTHWESTEBN 

(Idaho, Montana, Oregon, 
Washington. ) 

Fifth Ave. and Seneca St., 
Seattle, Wash. 
Jane Scott, Executive 
Grace Maxwell, City 
Eleanor Hopkins, Student 
Van S. Lindsley, Of[ice 

AVEST CENTBAL 

( Colorado, Kansas, Utah, 
Wyoming. ) 

321 McClintock Bldg., 
Denver, Colo. 
Marcia O. Dunham, Executive 
M. Frances Cross, City 
Lucy Y. Riggs, Student 
Katharine Halsey, Student 
Ethel Adams, Office 

SOUTH ATLANTIC 

(Florida, Georgia, North and 

South Carolina, Virginia. ) 

512 Commercial Bank Bldg., 

Charlotte, N. C. 

Amy Smith, Executive 

Ada Starkweather, City mid 

Industrial 
Mabel E. Stone, Student 
Willie Young, Student 
Carrie McLean, O^ce 

CENTRAL 

(Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, 
Wisconsin. ) 

58 East Washington St., 
Chicago, 111. 
Ida V. Jontz, Executive 
Elva Slj', City 



Gertrude Gogin, Industrial — 

Extension 
Maud Trego, County 
Mary Corbett, Student 
Eleanor Richardson, Student 
Elcy McCausey, Office 

SOUTH CENTBAL 

(Alabama, Arkansas, Ken- 
tucky, Louisiana, Missis- 
sippi, Missouri, Tennessee.) 
1411 Locust St., 
St. Louis, Mo. 
Elizabeth MacFarland, Execu- 
tive 
Charlotte Davis, City 
Ina Scherrebeck, Student 
Frances Y. Smith, Student 
Sara Foster, Office 

OHIO AND WEST VrEGINIA 

1211 First National Bank 
Building, 

Cincinnati, Ohio 
Elizabeth Hughes, Executive 
Harriet Harrison, City 
Constance MacCorkle, Indus- 
trial — Ex tension 
Mabel H. Ward, Student 
Margaret BroAvn Moore, Office 

NORTHEASTERN 

(New England, New Jersey, 
New York.) 

600 Lexington Ave., 
New York City 
Pauline Sage, Executive 
Lena M. Farrar, City 
Mary A. Dingman, Industrial 
— Extension 



386 FIFTY YEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 



Anna M. Pyott, Industrial — Helen Farquhar, Student 

Extension Lucy T. Bartlett, Office Ex- 

Anna M. Clark, County ecutive 
Margaret Flenniken, Student 

American Secretabies on Foreign Field 



INDIA 

Florence Bodley Lang, 
Myra Withers, 

170 Hornby Road, Bombay 
Martha C. Whealdon, 

Wellington Lines, Bombay 
Beatrice Cron, 
Mary E. Rutherford, 

134 Corporation Street, 
Calcutta 
Florence Denison, 

Y. W. C. A., Lahore 
Lela Guitner {on leave of 

absence ) 
Martha Downey, 
Margery Melcher, 

Poonamallee Road, Madras, 
N. C. 
Laura Radford, 

Singapore, Straits Settle- 
ment 

CHINA 

Abby Shaw Mayhew, 
Grace L. Coppock, 
Freeda Boss, 
Ruth Paxson, 

Box 713 American P. O., 
Shanghai 
Harriet L. Boutelle, 
Jessie K. Angell, 
Jean Paxton, 

cr. Y. W. C. A., Canton 
Helen Bond Crane, 
Helen Harshaw, 



Ponasang, Foochow 
Theresa Severin, 
Lilly K. Haass, 
Harriet M. Smith, 
Catharine Vance, 

cr. Y. W. C. A., Peking 
Jane S. Ward, 
Henrietta Thomson, 
Edith Sawyer, 

10 West End Lane, Shanghai 
Katharine King, 
Edith May Wells, 

cr. Y. W. C. A., Tientsin 

JAPAN 

Ruth Emerson, 
Ruth Ragan, 

12 Tamachi Sanchome, Us- 
higome, Tokyo 
Margaret Matthew, 
Mary Page, 

41 Sa/nbancho Koiimachi' 
Ku, Tokyo 
Mary C. Baker, 

51 Main St., Yokohama 

SOUTH AMERICA 

Irene Sheppard, 
Persis M. Breed, 
Elisa Cortez, 

Calle San Martin 2^3 
Buenos Aires, Argentina 

TURKEY 

Frances C. Gage, 

cr. Constantinople College, 
Constantinople 



INDEX 



A 



Adam, Rev. John Douglas, 
235 

Adams, Annie L. (Baird), 72 

Adams, Charlotte H., 73, 
105, 250 

Adolescent Girl, The, 298 

Albion College, Michigan, 
128, 132 

Aleott, Louisa May, 5 

Allen, Mrs. Dudley P., 227 

Allen, Lou (Gregory), 96 

Alliance Employment Bu- 
reau, 213 

Altamont, 291 

Althouse, Carrie, 122 

Alumnae in state conventions, 
131 
in religious and social serv- 
ice, 273 

American department of the 
World's Y. W. C. A., 188 

American Committee, 183- 
195 

American Tract House, 24, 
103 

Ames, Iowa, 95 

Amity Place, N. Y. City, 25 

Anderson, Esther L., 190, 
311 

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 123 

Annual Members, 275 

Appleton, Wisconsin, 122 

Argentina, The, 303 

Arkansas, 238 

Armstrong, Mary, 152 



387 



Asbury Park, 78 

Asheville, 246 

Asilomar, 247, 321 

Associated Charities, 56 

Association House, 70 

Association Idea, 8 

See also Purpose of Asso- 
ciation 

"Association Monthly, The," 
234 

Atlanta Conference, 272 

Augusta, Georgia, Y. W. C. 
A., 283 

Aurora Y. W. C. A., 70, 283 

Australasia, 311 



B 



Bacon, Mrs. K B., 240 
Bainbridge, Mrs. W. S., 192 
Baker, Mrs. Stephen, 228 
Balfour, Lady Frances, 102 
Baltimore Y. W. C. A., 83, 

87, 104, 217 
Bangs, Dr. Nathan, 22 
Barnes, Helen F., 157, 190, 

294, 311 
Barnes, Dr. Ida C, 240 
Barnet, England, 9 
Barrows, Anna, 46 
Basis of Active Membership, 

221-222 
Bates, Eula (Lee), 72, 133 
Batty, Emma Jean, 307 
Bay View Assembly, 175 
Bay View Cottage, 172 
Beach, Rev. Harlan P., 180 



S88 



INDEX 



Beech, M., 121 
Benfey, Ida (Judd), 177 
Bennett, Estelle, 152 
Berlin, Germany, 260 
Bernadotte, Prince, 147 
3erninger, Martha ( Mrs. 

Thomas Kydd) , 189, 306, 

308 
Bevier Bell (Isabel), 131 
Bible Classes, 34, 46, 67-71, 

141 
Bible Reading, 69 
Billings, Mary (Mrs. John 

French), 228 
Birmingham, England, 20 
Bishop, Isabella Bird, 314 
Blodgett, Mary E., 44, 45 
Bloomington, Illinois, 114, 

128, 132, 173 
Boarding Homes, 34, 76-78 
Boarding Places, 32 
Boies, Col. H. M., 240 
Boies, Mrs. Henry M., 228, 

240 
Bonar, Mrs. Horatius, 10 
Boston Y. W. C. A., 29-49, 

65, 80, 90, 91, 95, 96, 

100, 102, 159 
Bosworth, Professor Edward 

I., 250 
Boulton, Mrs. William B., 

228 
Boyd, Mrs. Lucretia, 29 
Bradford, Mrs. L. P., 133 
Bradley, James A., 78 
Branches — ^not departments, 

11 
Bridges, Frances (Mrs. 

George H. Atkinson ) , 

190 
Brinton Hall, 151 
Bristol, England, 20 
British American Associa- 
tion, see Paris, France 
Broadus, Dr. John A., 123 
Broadway Tabernacle, 22 



Broadwell, Mrs. S. J., 227 
Brockman, Fletcher S., 305 
Brooklyn Y. W. C. A., 70, 98, 

101, 282, 283 
Brown, Dr. Anna L., 73, 203, 

219, 263 
Brown, Ida E. (Mrs. James 

Gary), 116 
Brown, Lida (Mrs. William 

P. McMurry), 115, 116 
Browne, Mrs. P. D., 163 
Brownell, Eleanor, 235 
Bryant, W. C, 85 
Buckley, Dr. James M., 177 
Buffalo W. C. A., 55, 159 

Y. W. C. A., 101, 290 
Buenos Aires, Argentine, 307 
Buildings, 105-107, 151, 270, 

281, 282, 308 
''Bulletin, The," 205, 234 
"Bundle of Letters to Busy 

Girls, A," 214 
Burnham, Mary, 120 
Business Women's Club, 283 
Busy Girls' Half Hour, 104 
Buxton, Mrs. W. S., 219 . 



C 



Cabot, Dr. Richard C, 321 

Cafeteria, 84 

Calcutta, India, 183, 304 

California, 238 

Calisthenics, see Physical 

Education 
Cambridge Band, 144 
Cameron, Minnie (Mrs. J. V. 

Hartness), 120 
Campbell, Mrs. E. M., 228 
Campbell, Helen, 105 
Camp Collie, 171, 172, 295 
Camp Nepahwin, 291 
Canada, 175, 183, 311 
Canton (English Branch), 

305 
Camp Fire Girls, 299 



INDEX 



389 



Camps, see under Conference 
Department and Sum- 
mer Homes 

Capitola, 246 

Carbondale, Illinois, Y. W. 
C. A. of the S. I. N. U., 
121 

Carleton College, Minnesota, 
59, 156 

Cascade, 246 

Cassiday, Jennie, 79 

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 129, 
132, 282 

"Century Magazine," 105 

Chappell, Neva A., 105 

Charlotte, N. C, 238 

Charter members, 225, 255 

Chauneey Street, Boston, 33 

Chautauqua, 96, 171, 202, 
296 

Chicago, 171-173, 196-199 

Chicago Y. W. C. A., 102, 
160, 197 

China, 303, 306, 308 

Chinese Indemnity Students, 
see Foreign Students in 
America 

Christian Endeavor Society, 
59, 132, 155 

Christian Improvement As- 
sociation, 17 

Christian Women's Educa- 
tion Union of Scotland, 
126 

"Christian Worker, The," 
204 

Chun, Ying Mei, 308 

Church, see Basis of Active 
Membership and Federal 
Council 

Church of the Puritans, 22 

Cincinnati, 238 

Cincinnati W. C. A., 53, 56, 
95, 97, 159 

City Associations ( after 
1906), 281-288 



Civil War, 6, 91 

Cleveland W. C. A., 53, 54, 

56 
Close Hall, 151 
Club Organizations, 86, 87 
Coe College, Iowa, 129 
Coeducational Colleges, 108- 

114, 124-133 
Coldwater, Michigan, Y. W. 

C. A., 100 
College Associations, see Stu- 
dent Y. W. C. A.'s 
Colored Associations, 271, 239 
City, 285 
Conferences, 271 
Student, 271 
Commercial Studies, 91 
Commissions 

Character Standards, 265 
Domestic Service, 76 
Restatement of Student 

Basis, 276-278 
Social Morality, 265 
Thrift and Efficiency, 265 
Committee on Schools and 

Colleges, 126, 170 
Communion of the Lord's 

Supper, 314 
Conde, Bertha, 190, 235, 270 
Conference Department 

Before 1906, see Summer 

Conferences 
Camps, 291, 296 
City, 288 
County, 295 
Student, 246 
Conferences of the Interna- 
tional Board 
1891—196-198, 216 
1893—198-200 
1903—200 
1905—202, 223 
Conferences of the W. C. A., 
159-166 
1871, 1873—125 
1875—169 



S90 



INDEX 



Conferences of the W. C. A. 
— Continued. 

1877—169, 197 

1881—125, 167 

1883—128, 167 

1885—168-171, 216 

1887—170 
Conferences of the W. S. C. 
F. 

1895, Vadstena Castle, 147 

1897, Williamstown, 279 

1905, Zeist, 148 

1913, Lake Mohonk, 278, 
279 

Conferences of the World's 
Y. W. C. A. 

1898, London, 311-314 

1906, Paris, 307 
1910, Berlin, 260--263 

1914, Stockholm, 314 
Constantinople College, 327 
Constitution 

Boston, 32 

City, 23, 32 

International Conference, 

162 
Student, 115, 127 
World's Y. W. C. A., 313 
Y. W. C. A.'s of U. S. of 

A., 254-259 
See also Basis of Active 

Membership 
Conventions of National 

Association — later The 

American Committee 
1886—171-173 
1889—173 
1891—175 
1893—62 
1899—183, 188 
1901—188 
1903—189, 194 
1905—218 
1906, special, 223 
Conventions, State, 130-133, 

242-244 



Conventions, Y. M. C. A., 119, 

128, 256, 257 
Conventions of the Y. W. C. 

A.'s of the U. S. of A. 
1906, New York City, 225- 

227 
1909, St. Paul, 237, 254- 

259 
1911, Indianapolis, 263 
1913, Richmond, 264, 265, 

276 
1915, Los Angeles, 277 
Cooke, Helen Temple, 235 
Cooking Classes, see Domes- 
tic Science 
Cooper, Hon. Peter, 94 
"Cooperative patience," 235, 

251 
Cornell College, Iowa, 128 
Corson, Juliet, 96, 97, 165 
Country Associations, 132, 

153-158, 292-296 
County Organization, 156- 

158, 292-296 
Cratty, Mabel, 193, 321 
Crete, Nebraska, 121 
Crimean War, 9 
Crosby, Dr. Howard, 256 
Cross, Frances, 193 
Cunningham, Miss, 120 
Cushman, Mrs. J. S., 227 
Cutler, Ethel, 273 



D 



Daeniker, Maud, 228 

Dashwood, G. L., 165 

Davis, Mrs. John, 53, 159 

Day Nursery and Kindergar- 
ten Society, 56 

Day of Prayer for Colleges, 
111 

Dayton, Ohio, W. C. A., 55, 
104 

Decker, Debbie, 121 

Delegation to Cincinnati, 168 



INDEX 



391 



Delaware, 238 
Delsarte, 99 
Democracy, 86, 288 
Denominational Colleges, 108- 

114 
Department of Method, 252 
Depauw University, Indiana, 

129 
de Perrot, Mile. Anna, 163 
Detroit Y. VV. C. A., 70, 291 
Dick, Jean, 72 
Dick, Nellie (Adams), 72 
District of Columbia, 218, 239 
Doane College, Nebraska — 

Young Ladies' Society of 

Co-workers, 121 
Dodge County, Minnesota, 

157 
Dodge, Grace H., 87, 149, 165, 

192, 206-251, 262, 263; 

284, 319, 326-328 
Dodge, William Earl, Jr., 

124 
Doheny, Ella, 67 
Domestic Art, 46, 93-95 
Domestic Circle, 212 
Domestic Economy, 46, 95 
Domestic Science, 41, 46, 96- 

98 
Domestic Service, 41—44, 75— 

76 
Dorcas Societies, 5 
Dorman, Mrs. R. A. (Mary 

Aitken), 219, 227, 229 
Dow, Caroline B., 250 
Downey, Anna, 168 
Drinkwater, Charlotte V., 

37-47 
Drummond, Professor Henry, 

147, 165 
Dryer, Emma, 176 
Duncan, Mrs. John C. ( Fanny 

Cassiday), 204 
Dunn, Helen (Mrs. L. M. 

Gates), 58 
Dunn, Mary S., 100, 177, 190 



Dunn, Nettie (Mrs. Walter 
J. Clark), 60, 174-176, 
318 

Durant, Mrs. Henry F., 32, 
45, 50 

Durkee, Mrs. F. L., 227 

Dyer, Rev. Heman, 24 



E 



"Earnest Worker, The," 204 
Ecumenical Missionary Con- 
ference 
New York, 1900, 148 
Edinburgh, 1910, 210 
Educational Classes, 33, 36, 

87—98 
Eight Week Clubs, 294 
Elliott, Arthur J., 235 
Elliott, Harrison, 273 
Elliott, J. H., 176 
Ellis Island, 301 
El Paso, Illinois, 293 
Emergency Lectures, 43 
Employed Officers, 318 
Chaplain, 67 
County secretary, 292 
Extension secretary, 105, 

194 
Foreign secretary, 63, 146 
Girls' secretary, 297 
General secretary, 317 
Lunchroom director, 323 
Matron, 323 
National secretary 
headquarters, 233 
field, 237 
Physical director, 100, 322 
Religious work director, 

72, 270 
Secretary of colored 

branches, 272 
State secretary, 133-137 
Student secretary, 152 
Superintendent, 16 



SQ2 



INDEX 



Employed Officers — Continued. 
Traveling secretary, 133- 

137 318 
World's Secretary, 182, 193 
Employed Officers' Confer- 
ence 
1909—319 
1911—320 
1913—321 
1915—321 

See also Secretaries* Con-' 
ferenees, 1889, 292, 318 
Employment Bureau, 41, 73- 

76 
Eureka, Illinois, 292 
"Evangel, The," 135, 189, 

234, 303 
Evangelical Alliance, 112 
Evangelical Basis 

^ee Basis of Active Mem- 
bership, Commission on 
Restatement of Student 
Basis, Constitutions, 

Federal Council of 
Churches 
Evangelical Churches, 222, 

255-259, 273 
Evangelistic Campaigns, 130, 

141, 270, 287 
Ewing, Mrs. Emma P., 46 
Exeter Hall, 102, 312 
Expositions in U. S. A. 
1876—95 

1893—189, 198, 199 
1901—200 

1904—200, 201, 203 
1905—200 
1915—266-268 
abroad, 1851—92 
abroad, 1900—200 



"Faith and Works," 204 
Farmington, 206 



Farwell, Mrs. John V., Jr., 
173 

Federal Coimcil of Churches, 
257-259 

Federation of Clubs, 291 

Female Cent Societies, 6 

Field, Frances, 224, 235, 236 

Field Work Department, 
236-241 

Fifty-second Street, N. Y. 
City, 266 

Fillmore County, Minne- 
sota, 156, 157 

Finance, 85, 242-245, 282 
After 1906, see also Fi- 
nance Department 

Finance Department, 241- 
246 

Finland, 311 

Finney, Rev. Charles G., 5, 
7 

First Aid to the Injured, 43, 
284 

Fisher, Martha S. (Mrs. E. 
E. Stacy), 57 

Foochow (English Branch), 
305 
Methodist School and 
Seminary, 305 

Ford, Mabelle, 263 

Foreign Department, 252, 
309 

Foreign Students in Amer- 
ica, 279, 309, 310 

Foreign Work, 183-189 
After 1906, see Foreign 
Department 

Forman, John N., 145 

Foster, Mary, 33, 317 

France, 311 

French, Daniel Chester, 278 

French, Mrs. John (Mary 
Billings), 329 

Fries, Dr. Karl, 148 



INDEX 



393 



Gage, Frances C, 308 
Galesburg, Illinois, 129 
Gates, Mrs. L. M. (Helen 

Dunn), 58, 240 
Germantown, Pa., W. C. A., 

55 95 104 
Girl's Department, 87, 297 
Giria' Friendly Society, 19 
Girls' Public School Athletic 

League, 210 
Gladding, Mrs. Thomas S. 

(Effie K. Price), 219, 

226 
Glasgow, Scotland, 20 
"Gleaner, The," 204 
Gordon, Mrs. A. D., 191 
Gospel Meeting, 68 
Gould, Helen Miller (Mrs. 

Finley J. Shepard), 219, 

227, 295 
Grace, Mayor, 208 
Grace Whitney Hoff League, 

291 
Gramercy Park, 250, 266, 

324 
Gray, Rev. James M., 46 
Great Britain, 21, 182, 311 
Green, Mrs. Henry, 227 
Greencastle, Indiana, 129, 

132 
Greenville and Tusculum 

College,' Tennessee, 129 
Gregg, Lucinda, 47 
Griffith, Mrs. J. S., 219 
Grinnell, Iowa, 129 
Guinness, Geraldine (Mrs. 

Howard Taylor), 304 
Guinness, Lucy, 145 
Gymnasium, see Physical 

Education 

H 

Hall, Thirsa F., 174 
Hammond, E. P., 115 



Hang Chow, China, 303 
Hanover College, Indiana, 

124 
''Harland, Marion," see Ter- 

hime 
Harlem Y. W. C. A., 70 
'^Harriet Judson, The," 283 
Harrison, President Benja- 
min, 149 
Hartford, Conn., 37, 50, 125, 

159, 160 
Haskell Institute, 273 
Havergal, Frances Ridley, 

11, 163 
Hawaii, 239 
Hays, Emma, 190, 219 
Hearst, Mrs. Phoebe, 243-247 
Hendrix, Bishop E. E., 258 
Henrotin, Mrs. Charles, 198 
Hermosa Club, 284 
Hill, Agnes Gale, 62, 185- 

187, 304 
Hill, Mary B., 186, 187 
Hillsdale College, Michigan, 

58, 128 
Hitchcock & Rogers, 7, 8, 

316 
Hoff, Mrs. John Jacob 

(Grace Whitney Evans), 

310 
Holland, J. G., 85 
Holmes, 0. W., 85 
Hong Kong ( English 

Branch), 305 
Hooker, Mrs. Isabella Beecher, 

51 
Hoopskirt Factory, 24, 103 
Hopkinton, Iowa, 121 
Hospital, 34 

Household Arts, see Domes- 
tic Economy 
Howard, General O. O., 256 
Hunt, Rosamund ( Gordon ) , 

120 
Hunter, Ethel (Mrs. Charles 

deJ. Luxmoore), 304 



394< 



INDEX 



Hunton, Mrs. W. A. (Addie 

Waite), 271 
Hunting, Bernice, 72 
Huntington, Emily, 46, 207 
Hymn of the Lights, 264 



Iowa Agricultural College, 

96 
Iowa College (later Grinnell 

College), 129 
Iowa Wesley an College, 128 
Irene Club, 211-213 



Illinois, 72, 132 

Illinois Industrial Univer- 
sity — later University of 
Illinois, 96 

Illinois State Normal Uni- 
versity, 114-119, also see 
Normal 

Illinois Wesleyan Univer- 
sity, 128 

Immigrants, 300-302 

India, 183-188, 303, 304, 308 

Indian Associations, 272 

Indiana, 132 

Indianapolis, 263 

Industrial Education Associ- 
ation, 207 

Industrial Extension, 24, 103- 
105, 289-291 

Institute, 17, 194, 195, 248 
See also Secretarial Train- 
ing 

"Intercollegian, The," 276 

Intercollegiate Y. M. C. A., 
122-124 

Intercollegiate Y. W. C. A., 
119, 134, 147 

International Board, 196- 
205 

International Committee of 
the Y. W. C. A.— later 
The American Commit- 
tee, 173-183 

International Institute, 301 

"International Messenger, 

The," 204, 234 

Invitation Committee, 69 

Iowa, 132, 154, 155 



Japan, 303, 306, 308 
Jenkinson, Mrs. R. C, 227 
Johnson County, Iowa, 153, 

154 
Joint Committee, The, 223- 

227 
Judson, Mrs. C. N., 219, 227 

K 

Kalamazoo, Michigan, Y. W. 

C. A., 68, 155, 105 
Kalamazoo College, Michigan, 

128 
Kansas, 72, 133, 155, 244 
Kansas Agricultural Col- 
lege, 95 
Kansas City, Mo., 280 
Kansas City Y. W. C. A., 62, 

84, 102 
Kawai, Michi, 262, 306, 322 
Kingsmill, Agnes, 250 
Kinnaird, The Hon. Arthur 

(later Lord K.), 15-17 
Lord (son of founder), 165 
The Hon. Emily, 15, 165, 

183-184 
The Hon. Gertrude, 165, 

183 
Mary Jane (Lady), 15-20 
Kirkland School, 84 
Kitchen Garden Association, 

207 
Kiiight, Naomi (Mrs. O. M. 

Easterday), 135, 168, 

172 
Know Your City Week, 286 



INDEX 



395 



Ejiowles, Mary (Mrs. Walter 

Lindsay), 80 
Knox College, Illinois, 129 
Knox, Nellie (Mrs. F. E. 

Miller), 133 
Kyle Margaret (Mrs. E. E. 

Barber), 190 



Ladies' Christian Association, 

see New York 
Ladies' Christian Union, see 

New York 
Ladies' Prayer Meeting, 22, 

SO, 66 
Lake Geneva, 171, 178, 246 
Lake Mohonk, 278, 279 
Lamson, Mrs. Edwin, 30, 38, 

126, 160 
Lahore, India, 189 
Lancaster, Mass., Industrial 

School, 38 
Lancaster, Penn., Y. W. C. 

A., 283 
Larcom, Lucy, 4, 5 
Larkin Y. W. C. A., 290 
Lasell Seminary, Mass., 96 
Lawrence, Kas., Y. W. C. A., 

58 
Lawrence, Mass., Y. W. C. 

A., 301 
Lawrence University, 122, 

129 
Lenox College, Iowa, 121 
LeSeur, Pastor, 262 
Lewis, Dr. Dio, 99 
Lewis, Flora (Gallup), 120 
Lexington Avenue, N. Y., 266 
Library, 87-89 
Lincoln, Mrs. D. A. (Mary 

J. Bailey), 46, 96 
Lindsey, Walter, 80 
Literary Societies, 113-114, 

139 



Little Girls' Christian Asso- 
ciation, 297 
Liverpool, England, 20 
London, 7-21, 30, 101, 160 
Longfellow, Henry W., 34 
Los Angeles, 238, 283, 301 
Louise Cecile School, 204 
Louisville, Ky., W. C. A., 79 
Intercollegiate Y. M. C. A., 

124 
Conference on Colored As- 
sociations, 239 
Low, Hon. Seth, 214 
Lowell, Maria White, 5 
Lowell, Mass., 4, 159 
Lowell, Mass., Y. W. C. A., 

224 
Lucknow College, 148 
Lyon, Mary, 5 

MAC 

MacDonald, A. Caroline, 306 
MacDougal, Evelyn, 176 

MC 

McAfee, Rev. Cleland B., 226 
McAlpin, Mrs. D. H., 85 
McCoUins, Mrs., 164 
McConaughy, David, 181, 

186, 187 
McConaughy, Mrs. David, 

187, 228 

McCook, Janet (Mrs. Mal- 
colm D. Whitman), 227, 
246, 328 
McCormick, Mrs. Cyrus H., 

Sr., 195 
McCrea, Mrs. F. F., 240 
McDougal, Mrs. John, 125 
McKenzie, Elizabeth, 292 

M 

Madras, India, 184-186 
Manchester, England, 20 



396 



INDEX 



Manhattan Conference, The, 

219-223 
Mansion House, London, 313 
"Margaret Louisa, The," 82 
Mary Clark Memorial Home, 

The, 283 
Maryland, 238 
Mayhew, Abby S., 61, 100, 

309, 322 
Members' Council, 283 
Membership, 64, 138, 265 
Merom Christian College, 

Indiana, 128 
Messer, L. Wilbur, 71, 325 
Messer, Mrs. L. Wilbur, 228, 

229, 325 
Metropolitan Organizations, 

271, 282 
Michigan, 72, 132, 155 
Mildmay, 9 
Miller, H. Thane, 54, 55, 125, 

160 
Miller, Mrs. H. Thane (Em- 
ma P. Smith), 119, 125- 

129, 167 
Mills College, 246 
Mill Villages, 290 
Milwaukee Y. W. C. A., 104, 

105 282 
Minneapolis W. C. A., 58-60 
Y. W. C. A., 58-61, 105, 

282 
Minnesota, 133, 157 
Minonk, Illinois, 293 
Mission Board Kepresenta- 

tives, 276 
Missionary Meetings, 71 
Missionary Societies, 6 
Missouri, 236, 238 
Monaghan Mills Y. W. C. A., 

290 
Montclair, The, 234 
Monteagle, 203 
Montgomery, Ala., Y. W. C. 

A., 101 



Montreal, Canada, 31, 126, 

163 
Moody, D. L., 51, 52, 143, 191 
Moor, Lucy M., 12 
Morning Watch, 140, 178, 305 
Morrison, Theresa, 306 
Morse, Rebecca F., 72, 87, 

181, 188, 189 
Morse, Richard C, 85, 225 
Mosher, Dr. Eliza, 98 
Mott, John R., 71, 143, 145, 

147, 226, 272 
Mott, Mrs. John R., 228 
Mottoes 

Associates, 331 
International Board, 332 
National Committee of Y. 

W. C. A.'s, 331 
Prayer Union, 330 
World's, 331 

Y. W. C. A. of U. S. A., 
332 
Mt. Auburn Institute, 125 
Mt. Hermon, 142-145, 191 
Mt. Holyoke Seminary, 5 
MuUer, daughter of George 

M., 11 
Mullens, Priscilla, 300 



N 



Nagasaki, Japan, 303 

Naperville, Illinois, 120 

Narey, Hope, 100 

National Association, later 
The American Commit- 
tee, 142, 171-173 

National Board, 226-259, 277 

National Cash Register fac- 
tory, 104 

National Headquarters, 266, 
282 

National Training School, 
249, 250, 323-325 



INDEX 



397 



National Vigilance Commit- 
tee, later American So- 
cial Hygiene Associa- 
tion, 215 

Nebraska, 122, 133 

Negro Student Conference, 
see Colored Associations 

Nevada, 238 

Newark, N. J., W. C. A., 55, 
224 

Newburgh, N. Y., Y. W. C. 
A., 100, 107 

Newell, Alice (Mrs. Lloyd 
Davis), 189 

New England Pastors, 34 

New England States, 236 

New Haven Y. W. C. A., 90, 
97 

New Jersey, 236 

New York City, 238 

New York City Board of Ed- 
ucation, 208 

IN"ew York City, Ladies' 
Christian Association, 
23-25, 103 
Ladies' Christian Union, 

25, 50 
Young Ladies' Branch 
(later Y. W. C. A.), 55, 
67, 74, 85, 91, 92, 100, 
105 

New York Cooking School, 96 

Nightingale, Florence, 14, 
327 

New York State, 236 

Noon Rest, 83 

Normal, Illinois, 114-119, 
124 

Normal Schools, 108 

"North American Student, 
The," 276 

North American Student 
Council, 276 

North Carolina, 238 



Normal University, see Illi- 
nois State Normal Uni- 
versity 
Northfield Conference, 191, 

246 
North London Home, 16, 65 
Northwestern College, Illi- 
nois, Y. L. C. A., 120, 
168 
Norway, 21, 182, 311 
Nurses' Central Club, 270 



O 



Oakland, California, Y. W. 

C. A., 297 
Ober, C. K, 71 
Oberlin Collegiate Institute, 5 
Occupations, 35, 75, 91 
Office Department, 234 
Ogontz School, 84, 208 
Ohio, 132, 155, 236, 238 
Olivet College, Michigan, Y. 

W. C. A., 120 
Omaha Y. W. C. A., 70 
Onondaga Indian Club, 283 
Orlebar, Maude, 304 
Orroek, Rev. J. M., 47 
Oskaloosa, Iowa, 129 
Otis, Dr. Edward O., 43 
Otterbein University, Ohio, 

128, 151 
Oxford Movement, 7 



Pacific Grove, 247 

Paddock, A. Estella, 193, 306 

Pageant, Ministering of the 

Gift, 264 
Palmer, Mrs. Potter, 198 
Panama Pacific International 

Exposition, 266 
Parker, Thomas F., 290 
Parloa, Maria, 42, 96 



398 



INDEX 



Paris, France, 
British American Associa- 
tion, 310 
Student Hostel, 308, 310 
World's Conference, 307 

Parsons College, Iowa, 128 

Patriotic Fund, 9 

Paxson, Ruth, 190 

Pearl Street Church, Hart- 
ford, 50, 159 

Penn College, Iowa, 129 

Pennefather, Catherine (Mrs. 
William), 9-12, 20, 163 

Pennefather, William, 9 

Pennsylvania, 238, 244 

Pentecost, Dr. George F., 183 

Peoria, Illinois, Y. W. C. A., 
292 

Personal Evangelism, 136, 
141 

Personal Work, 136, 141 

Philadelphia, 238 

Philadelphian Society, Prince- 
ton, 124 

Philadelphia, W. C. A., 55, 
74, 78, 82, 91, 100, 159 

Philistines, 239 

Phillips, Ann Greene, 5 

Phillips, Philip, 51 

Phillips, T. W., 175 

Physical Director, 44 

Physical Education, 43, 98- 
101, 308 

Pitkin, Horace Tracy, 145 

Pittsburgh, W. C. A., 52 
Y. W. C. A., 105 

Pleasant Valley, Johnson 
County, Iowa, 153, 154 

Policies of National Board, 
234-259 

Portland Definition, 256, 257 

Poughkeepsie Y. W. C. A., 83, 
97, 100, 297 

Prayer for Times of Retreat, 
279 



Prayer Meetings — see re- 
ligious meetings 
Prayer Union, 10, 19, 20 
Preston, Minn., 156, 157 
Price, Effie Kelly (Mrs. 
Thomas S. Gladding), 
189, 191 
Price, Prof. Ira M., 250 
Princeton University, Phila- 
delphian Society, 124 
Y. M. C. A., 124 
"The Student Christian,'* 
278 
Protective Agents, 287 
Providence, R. I., W. C. A., 

51, 79, 159 
Publication Department, 234 
Purpose of Y. W. C. A.'s, 198, 
255, 285 

Q 

Quarterly — see Y. W. C. A. 
Quarterly 



R 



Rainwater, Mrs. C. C, 240 
Rawson, Mrs. C. A., 240 
Red Cross Society, 284 
Read, Clara S., 235 
Reid, Katharine, 250 
Religious Meetings, 34, 66- 

70, 140, 286 
Religious Work, 47 
Residence, the Association, 

283 
Restaurant, 36, 80-84 
Revival of 1857-58, 6, 22, 

123 
Rew, Mrs. Irwin (Katherine 

S. Jones), 194, 228 
Reynolds, Annie M., 182, 188, 

193, 228, 238, 246, 306 
Reynolds, James Bronson, 147, 

183, 214 



INDEX 



S99 



Rice, Anna V., 322 

Richards, Belle (Bunker), 
72 

Richards, Mrs. Ellen H., 45 

Richardson, Mrs. J. B., 227 

Riverdale, 206, 278 

Roanoke, Illinois, 293 

Robarts, Emma, 9-12, 19, 330 

Roberts, Mrs. Marshall O., 
22-25, 50, 328 

Rochester Y. W. C. A., 282, 
286 

Rome, Italy, 163, 164 

Rooms for Student Associa- 
tions, 151 

Roosevelt, Theodore, 249 

Ross, Dr. A. Johnston, 315 

Rossiter, Mrs. W. W., 227 

Rouse, Ruth, 149, 188, 216 

Russia, 311 

S 

Salt Lake City, 163 
Sanders, Frank K., 180 
Sanford, Rev. E. B., 225 
Sanford, Mary F. (Mrs. 

William G. Morison), 

235 
San Francisco Y. W. C. A., 

102 
Sangster, Mrs. Margaret E., 

177, 227 
Saunders, Una, 321 
Schell, Ida, 133, 168, 172 
Schofield, Mrs. Levi T., 240 
Schooley, Ella, 266 
Scranton, Pa., Y. W. C. A., 

58, 60, 100, 104 
Seaside, 246 
Secretarial Department, 248- 

251 
Secretarial Training, 47, 193- 

195 
After 1906 — see National 

Training School 



Secretarial Training — Contin- 
ued. 
Secretarial Department 
Summer School 
Training Centers 

Self Governing Clubs, 87, 
210-214, 284 

Self Government 
Conferences, 275 
Residences, 283 

Sewing Classes — see Domes- 
tic Art 

Sewing Machines, 6, 77, 93- 
95 

Shaftesbury, Seventh Earl of, 
14, 18, 20, 101 

Shanghai, China — Chinese 
Association, 188, 306, 
308 
English Branch, 305 

Shepard, Mrs. Elliott F., 82 

Shepard, Mrs. Finley J. 
(Helen Miller Gould), 
296 

Sheppard, Lizzie, 121 

Sherman, Jennie, 72, 133 

Silver Bay, 192, 246 

Silver, Emma, 72 

Simms, Florence, 190 

Singh, Lilavati, 148 

Slocum, Mrs. William F., 228 

Smith, Alice, 227 

Smith, Mrs. Charles B., 50 

Smith, Mrs. Hannah Whitall, 
161 

Smith, Mary Isabel, 105 
Social Features, 84-86, 139 
Social Service, 150, 273 
South Africa, 311 
South America, 307, 308 
South Bend, Indiana, Y. W. 

C. A., 282 
South Carolina, 238 
South Church, New York 

City, 225 



400 



INDEX 



Spcer, Robert E., 145, 226, 

235 
Speer, Mrs. Robert E., 219, 

227, 235, 329 
Spencer, Clarissa H., 145, 193 
Springer, Mrs. C. R., 196 
Springfield, Mass., W. C. A., 

55 95 
Starkweather, Ella, 120 
State Associations, 130--133, 

168, 170 
State Executive Committees, 

130-133, 236-241 
State Student Conferences 

( co-educational ) , 130- 

133 
State Universities, 108, also 

under separate names 
Statistics— 1909, 253 

Alumnae social service, 274 
Boston residents, 35 
Eight Week Clubs, 295 
Industrial, 289 
St. Joseph, Missouri, 57 
Student bodies, 269 
Steiner, Edward A., 301 
Stelzle, Rev. Charles, 226 
Stenographers' Association, 

283 
Stewart, Emma V. (Mrs. I. 

E. Brown), 116 
Stewart, Mary B., 240 
Stewart, Mrs. William S., 

202, 219 
Stiles Hall, 151 
St. Joseph, Mo., Y. W. C. A., 

57 
St. Louis, Mo., 125, 238 
St. Louis W. C. A., 54, 56, 

76, 85, 95, 97, 102 
Stockholm, Sweden, 314 
Stokes, James, 186-187 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 5 
Strangford, Viscountess, 15 
St. Paul, Minnesota, 133, 254 
Studd, J. E. K., 145 



Student Initiative, 274-275 

"Student Volunteer, The," 
146, 276 

Student Volunteer Movement, 
142-146, 185, 276, 280 

Studio Club, 271, 299 

Student Y. W. C. A.'s, 108- 
152 

Students' Christian Associa- 
tion, 122, 123 

Students' Handbook, 140 

Sullivan,^ Captain Thomas, 
30 

Simimer Conferences, 147, 
175-180, 190-193. After 
1906 see Conference De- 
partment 

Summer Homes, 78-80, 283, 
287 

Summer School, 322-323 

Sutcliffe, Charlotte, 250 

Sweden, 21, 182, 311 

Swift, John T., 181 

Swimming, 101 

Switzerland, 311 

Syracuse, Y. W. C. A., 283 

T 

Taft, President, 284 

Tarlton, J. H., 316 

Tarr, Corabel (Mrs. William 
Boyd), 174, 181, 189 

Taylor, Harriet, 190, 247 

Teachers' College, 208 

Terhune, Mrs. E. P. ("Mar- 
ion Harland"), 74, 164, 
177 

Territorial Committees — see 
Field Work Department 

Terry, Prof. M. S., 176 

"Three P. Circle," 212 

Thurston, Mrs. Frank T., 219, 
226 

Tokyo, Japan, Y. W. C. A., 
308 



INDEX 



401 



Toledo, Ohio, Y. W. C. A., 62 
Topeka, Kansas, 129 

Y. W. C. A., 58 
Topics, 116, 130, 159, 161, 

220, 319 
Tractarian pamphlets, 7 
Trained Attendants, 98 
Training School. See Na- 
tional Training School 
for Domestic Service, 44, 

95 
Training Centers, 249-251, 

324 
Travelers' Aid, 44, 101-103, 

200-202, 215, 267 
Trenton, N. J., Y. W. C. A., 

301 
Tritton, Mrs. J. Herbert, 21 
Trumbull, H. Clay, 51 
Tsuda, Ume, 306 
Tufts, Mrs. J. J., 219 
Tung Cho, China, 180, 303 
Turkey, 303, 308 
Twenty-seventh Street, New 

York City, 266 



U 



Uhler, Mrs. M. C, 318 
Union Internationale des 
Amies de la Jeune Fille, 
163 
Union of Previous National 

Bodies, 220-223 
United Association, 18 
United Central Council, 21 
United States, 21, 182 
University of California, 151, 
247 
Illinois, 129, 146, 186, 270, 

293 
Iowa, 151, 154 
Kansas, 273, 293 
Michigan S. C. A., 123 

Y. W. C. A., 293 
Minnesota, 152, 270 



Universities — Continued. 

Nebraska, 129 

Nevada, 247 

Virginia Y. M. C. A., 123 

Wisconsin, 129, 152 
Urbana, Illinois, 96 
Utica W. C. A., 55 

V 

Vacation Lodge — see Sum- 
mer Homes 

Vadstena Castle, 147 

Van Vliet, Bertha, 297 

Vesper Tea, 70 

Victoria, Queen, 312, 314 

Vincent, IMrs. B. T., 227 

Virginia, 238 

Voluntary Christian Educa- 
tion, 273 

Volunteer Workers, 318 

W 

Washburn, Illinois, 293 
Washburn College, Kansas, 

129 
W^ashington, D. C, W. C. A., 

55, 159, 217, 222 
Washington, D. C, Y. Wi C. 

A., 217, 222, 283 
Webb, Mrs,, 42 
Week of Prayer, 242, 313 
W^eidensall, Robert, 124, 156, 

157 
Welles, Anna (^Mrs. J. Wylie 

BroAATi), 308 
Wellesley College, 44, 46 
Wells, Mrs. Shepard, 78 
Western Secretarial Institute, 

171, 178 
Westerville, Ohio, 128, 132 
West Point, 278 
West Virginia, 238 
Whirlwind Campaign, 282 
Whit€ Slave Treaty, 215 



402 



INDEX 



Whitewater, Wisconsin, 132 
Whitman, Mrs. Malcom D. 

(Janet McCook), 328 
Whittelsey, Mrs. J. T., 219 
Wilder, Grace, 143 
Wilder, Robert P., 143 
Williams, Sir George, 7, 8, 

312, 316 
Wilson, Mrs. A. McD., 228 
Wilson, Annis, 122 
Wilson, Elizabeth, 174, 189, 

195, 219, 235 
Wilson, Jessie Woodrow 

(Mrs. Francis B. Sayre), 

294 
Wilson Industrial School, 

207 
Wisconsin, 132 
Wishard, Luther D., 119, 124- 

129, 147, 180 
Wishard, Mrs. L. D. (Eva 

Fancher), 180, 303 
Witbeck, Ida (Mrs. Charles 

DeGarmo), 116 
WolflF, Maude, 105 
Wood, Anna, 44 
Woodford County, Illinois, 

290 
Wooster University, Ohio, 

129 
Woman's Medical College, 

151 
Woman's Municipal League, 

The, 214 
Woman's Work, 3-6 
Women's Christian Associa- 
tion, 125-126 
Women's Colleges, 126, 138 
Women's Exchange, 56 
Women's Missionary Socie- 
ties, 6, 121 



Worcester, Mass., 237 
Worcester Y. W. C. A., 97, 

100, 101 
Workers' Training Class, 71, 

141 
World's Badge, 313 
"World's Nickel," 242 
World's Student Christian 

Federation, 147-150, 277, 

310 
World's Y. W. C. A., 21, 181- 

183, 277 



X-Y 

Yokohama, Japan, 306 

York, Pa., Y. W. C. A., 89 

Young Ladies' Christian As- 
sociation, 9, 115, 125, 150 

Young Men's Christian Asso- 
ciation, 8, 22, 30, 50, 52, 
53, 58, 99, 101, 115, 121, 
122, 123, 124, 134, 147, 
153, 157, 173, 213, 221, 
255, 273, 312, et passim 

Youngstown, Ohio, Y. W. C. 
A., 282 

Young Women's Christian 
Association 
(use of name), 11, 16, 18 

Y. W. C. A. Quarterly, 135, 
189, 229 

Ypsilanti, Michigan, Y. W. 
C. A., 58 



Zirkus, Busch, 261 
Zone Club House, 267 




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